While eating a vegan cherry pie, I asked myself, "How do you make a pie without butter?"
Every pie, from cherry to chicken to cheesecake, starts life as a recipe that must balance two competing halves. The first half is the filling or topping; it’s nearly always what the pie is known for or named after. Fillings or toppings run the gamut from whole Cornish hens to the luscious cherries depicted above, but how sweet or savory they are will dictate what kind of crust is used to hold the pie.
Crusts, or coffins as they were known in the old days, come in several major styles and constitute the second half of the pie equation. Most casual diners (and even some less culinary-inclined foodies) may describe an ideal pie crust as both tender and flaky. In fact, these are competing priorities for baked goods as diverse as pie crust.
Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking names three major kinds of pie crust/coffin:
crumbly, used for cheesecake, tarts, quiches, and chess pies (like pecan)
flaky, used for most standard fruit pies
and laminated/puff, used for standing pies, Beef Wellington, and the like
Crumbly, or “short,” crusts can be made from simply crushing cookies or mixing flour, butter, water, salt, and sugar to for a tight, sweet, almost brittle crust.
Tender crusts from puff pastry can be made with a cold water method of folding flour, butter, water, and salt into layers upon layers, often for hours. Phyllo and millefeuille are both made in a similar fashion. A hot water method also exists for standing pies based on flour, milk, water, salt, and lard.
A standard American cherry pie usually calls for a flaky crust, and as the question is how to make a vegan version of this pie, must do so without lard, dairy, or eggs.
A vegan version of this recipe simplifies one aspect of construction while simultaneously complicating another.
Standard pie crusts are assembled using the biscuit method, where ice -cold, solid fat is cut into flour and leavening with salt and liquid to form a somewhat dry crust. The target texture is somewhere between the almost brittle crust of cheesecake and the soft crust of puff pastry. Replacing the butter or lard is not hard at all; and solid vegetable shortening will do fine. Butter and lard have a much more finicky range of temperatures to work with than shortening to stabilize the crust. Plus, the water-in-lipid emulsion that is butter only remain stable within the crust-to-be while the butter is between 15 to 25% solid. Refined shortening does not have this issue; it’s all-fat, all day, every day and will stay stable in the crust for as long as its refrigerated after construction.
Removing the milk proves similarly easy; most pies can be assembled with nothing but water (and savory versions can even have vegetable broth drizzled in). A word of caution, however: removing the dairy and/or lard can leave the flavor of the crust flat. Consider a shade extra sugar or pulverized nuts to improve the crust’s flavor.
Sadly, there are no true substitutes for eggs (at least, not yet). One of nature’s truly protean foods, eggs are (thankfully) optional in most standard pie crusts. Salt is not, however. A pinch goes a long way.
Our current version of the pie looks like this now:
1 cup vegetable shortening, chilled
2 tablespoons pulverized almonds
2 cups pitted sour cherries
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1. Cut the shortening into the flour, pulverized almonds and salt with the whisking blades of a stand mixer or food processor on a low speed until the crumbs are pea-sized. Mix in cold water by hand just until the dough holds together in one’s palm. Divide the dough in half and form it with the heel of one’s hand and a rolling pin into two disks. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until chilled through, 30 minutes to 1 hour. This lets the flour hydrate and allows it to keep its shape later on.
2. Roll out one disk of dough into a 11-inch circle. Line a 9-inch pie pan with the pastry. Refrigerate until needed. Roll out the dough for the top crust, transfer it to a plate or baking sheet, and refrigerate.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Place a baking tray in the oven to preheat.
4. Now for the filling. Place the cherries, sugar, and cornstarch in a medium-sized non-aluminum saucepan. Allow the mixture to stand for 10 minutes, or until the sugar draws out the cherries’ juices. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Lower the heat; simmer for 1 minute, or until the juices thicken and become translucent. Remove pan from heat, and stir in almond extract. Allow the filling to cool to lukewarm (doing this before filling the crust lets the pectin and starch set the filling and minimize weeping ). Pour the filling into the pie shell. Cover with top crust, crimp the edges to seal, and cut vents to let the steam caused by baking to escape. Skip this step, and your pie can collapse!
5. Bake in a preheated 375 degree F (190 degree C) oven on the baking tray for 45 to 55 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Allow to cool for several hours before slicing. (Caution: This pie can weep. Sad but true.)
Anything I didn’t touch on? Shoot me another message. Hope it helps!
