Cherry pie recipe

Back in 2016 when Lisa & Saskia started The Biskery they wanted to share the taste of their home countries with the UK. Lisa is from Germany and Saskia is from the Netherlands. Over the years, their business grew to focus on personalised and branded biscuits in all shapes and forms. But they still like to bake and share the recipes that they tried and tested with you!

Our cherry pie recipe

This classic recipe from The Netherlands is called a ‘vlaai’ in Dutch. And while consumed throughout the The Netherlands, it traditionally comes from the southern region named Limburg. Traditional ones that are made in the region, are called ‘Limburgse Vlaai’. The recipe asks for some tools that might not come to hand easily, but we will show you that you don’t necessarily need them to make this delicious and juicy cherry pie! We have added in links to the proper tools, but you can very well make the pie detailing in more creative ways!

Ingredients

Quantity
Makes 12 slices of cherry pie

Prep time
1hr (incl rising time)

Oven time
25 mins

Tools:

• Flan pan 26cm (You can also use a fluted flan pan widely found in the UK)
• Rolling pin
• Mixing bowl
• Pie lattice pattern maker (You can also just cut strips of pastry and lay them across the top of the pie instead!)

Dough:

• 300 gr Plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 6 gram Dried yeast
• 25 gr Butter
• 3 tbs Olive oil
• 1,5 dl Milk
• 3 tbs Soft brown sugar
• 1 Egg yellow
• Sprinkling of Bread crumbs

Filling:

• 820 gram Tinned cherries

Topping:

• 50 gram Pearl sugar
• Egg wash to cover top

Method

Making the dough

1. Heat the milk to make it lukewarm and add the dried yeast
2. Put the salt at the bottom of a bowl and add the flour on top
3. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and add the diced pieced of butter, sugar, olive oil and egg yellow
4. Poor the yeast mix in the hole
5. Knead everything to a smooth, supple and airy dough. Just keep on kneading it may look like it will remain sticky. But it won’t. Resist the urge to add any more flour. It will become a beautiful shiny dough that will not stick to your fingers.
6. If for some reason it doesn’t, then add a little bit of flour
7. Let the dough rest in a warm place, covered with a damp cloth, for about 30 minutes

Filling the mould

1. Grease the entire mould well with butter
2. Knead the dough again after the 30-min rise
3. Take two thirds of the dough and role it out to a round shape. About a 32 cm diameter
4. Lay the hole dough over the mould and tuck it gently into the fold of the mould
5. The dough is very forgiving and will stretch a lot
6. Take a fork and punch a few holes in the bottom and put a thin layer of breadcrumbs over the entire bottom
7. Add the cherry filling to the base
8. Roll a round shape as big as the pie lattice mould and place it on top of the lattice pie topper mould
9. Roll over it with a rolling pin to make the diamond shaped dough - remove the excess dough from the pattern maker
10. Turn the pattern making mould over de cherry pie and release it
11. Cut the excess dough off the pie by rolling over the edge of the pie tin with your rolling pin
12. Put the egg wash over the top of the pie and sprinkle a hand full of pearl sugar over the top

Baking

1. Set the oven temperature to 180 degrees for fan oven or 200 electric oven
2. Bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven for 25 minutes
3. Add a bowl of water to the oven to prevent the crust from getting hard
4. After 15 mins see if you need to turn the vlaai in case it is browning more on one side then the other
5. The pie is finished when the dough has browned and the pie has come loose from the tin
6. Take the pie out of the oven and out of the mould. And leave to cool on the drying rack

Happy baking! We would absolutely love seeing your creations and take on this recipe! Do feel free to share your bakes with us by tagging us on our Instagram @thebiskery.