Cherry Vanilla Pie with a Homemade Whole Wheat Crust

Makes one 9″ pie; serves 8-10.

For the crust:
This amount makes enough for a bottom and top crust. Whether you cover the filling completely or do a lattice top is your choice.

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, add your spooned and leveled flours (both all-purpose and whole wheat), salt and sugar.

2. With your mixer on medium to medium-low, add your cold cubed butter, one square at a time. When all the butter has been added you’ll want to see a sand-like texture with a few lumps of butter the size of peas.

3. Turn your mixer down to low and slowly add your 1/4 cup of ice water (omitting ice) little by little until the dough just comes together and starts to pull away from the bowl (make sure that you do not over-mix at all). Depending on where you live and the weather the day you do this, your water amount will change. So you might need 1/4 cup or you might need closer to 1/3 cup. Just add a little at a time until dough just comes together. As soon as it does this, stop mixing! You can easily over mix which will result in a less flaky crust.

4. Pull dough out of bowl onto a floured surface and gently pat together into a ball. Wrap with plastic wrap and chill in your refrigerator for 15-20 minutes.

5. When the dough has chilled, pull it out of the fridge, split it in half and roll half of it on a floured surface until you have a circle about 1/4″ thick. Take your 9″ pie dish and place it upside down on top of the dough. You want the dough to exceed the pan about 2 inches at least, on all sides.

6. Gently invert the pan with the crust on top and press dough into pan, making sure to get it into the bottom and up the sides of the dish. Then with a sharp knife, cut the excess dough off as you go around your dish. Save these scraps! Bring scraps and the other section of dough together, re-wrap with plastic and place in fridge. You’ll be using them to top your pie tomorrow!

7. As for your pie crust that’s in the pan, wrap it well with plastic wrap and allow to sit in fridge overnight to settle.

For the pie:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with tin foil and set aside. Remove extra pie dough from fridge and allow it to come to room temperature a bit, for easier rolling. Once dough scrap disk has softened a tad, roll it out on a floured surface according to how you’ll cover your pie: a circle as wide as your pie pan, for full coverage or cut into lattice strips for a latticed top. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, combine completely defrosted bags of cherries (with their juices as well), the seeds of a scraped out 1/2 vanilla bean, cornstarch, vanilla sugar, salt and orange zest. Mix well, being careful not to break up cherries.

3. Take prepared pie dough in the pie pan out of fridge and place on your cookie sheet. Pour cherry mix into your pie dish. Cover your pie with your rolled out dough. I choose to do a fully covered top, because I felt it looked comforting and homey.

Note: If you decide to do a fully covered top as well, make sure you seal your bottom crust to your top crust by pinching seams together and cut air vents into your top crust to allow steam to exit!

4. Place prepared pie, on sheet pan, put it on the middle rack of the oven and bake 25 minutes. Make sure to turn pan halfway through cooking for even browning.

5. Remove pie from oven and quickly brush with your tablespoon of whole milk. Heavy cream and half-and-half will also work here. Then sprinkle the top with your 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar. Place pie back into the oven (on your sheet pan still) and bake an additional 25 minutes or until pie filling is bubbling and your crust is a nice golden brown. Turn pie halfway through baking time, again.

**If the edges of your pie are browning too quickly, remove pie from oven, and make sure to lightly cover (just the sides) with small strips of tin foil to slow down the browning process.

Remove pie from oven and allow to sit at room temperature a few hours to cool and allow filling to set up and thicken a bit, before serving. Dusting of powdered sugar on top is optional, but strongly encouraged!

Pie filling adapted from A Year of Pies, by Ashley English.
Pie crust is a Sweet Lavender Bake Shoppe original.