Cardamom Scented Sour Cherry Hand Pies
Sour cherries made into a filling flavored with cardamoms are tucked in a flaky pie crust to make these perfect individual heart shape hand pies.
Servings: 8 people
Ingredients
- 2 sheets prepared pie dough
- 1 cup sour cherries pitted
- ½ cup sugar see notes
- 2 green cardamoms cracked open and seeds removed
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ½ lime juiced
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
- Few tablespoons water
- 1 tablespoon heavy cream optional
- 1 tablespoon coarse sugar optional
Instructions
- Take the pie dough out of the refrigerator
- Set a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium high heat. Add pitted cherries, butter, sugar, lime juice, crushed cardamom, vanilla extract to the pan and bring to boil.
- Cook for around 8 minutes or until the cherries have softened. Use a fork to mash some of the cherries.
- Take about two tablespoon of cherry syrup out of the pan into a small bowl. Add corn starch into this syrup and make a slurry.
- Add the prepared slurry back to the saucepan and cook the cherry filling for two more minutes.
- Turn the heat off and let the filling cool in the refrigerator. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F
- While the filling is cooling, sprinkle some flour on your kitchen counter and unroll the pie dough. Cut out heart shapes from pie crust. If you use a medium sized heart shape cookie cutter, you should have 32 heart shaped pie crust pieces.
- Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Lay 16 heart shaped pieces on the lined cookie sheets.
- Take the filling out of the refrigerator and add about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each pie crust piece.
- Take the remaining 16 heart shaped pie crust pieces and while working with one piece at a time, wet the edges with water and cover the piece with cherry filling in it.
- Seal the edges and use a fork to crimp them. Use a sharp knife to make 2-3 cuts in the hand pie (see pictures). Repeat for alll 16 hand pies.
- Mix some water with heacy cream (if using) and using a pastry brush, brush each hand pie with this cream and water "glaze". Sprinkle some coarse sugar on each hand pie.
- Stick the cookie sheets in your pre heated oven and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove the cookie sheets from teh oven and let the sour cherry hand pies cool on a cooling rack for 10 minutes.
- Enjoy and Happy valentine's day to all
Notes
½ cup sugar is just enough to offset the tartness of sour cherries. If you want to make the filling sweeter, feel free to add more sugar.