Lattice Cherry Lime Hand Pies

Cutie hand pies rolling in as my 250th blog post! # 250: Lattice Cherry Lime Hand Pies

Happy Galentine’s & Valentine’s weekend! Remember when we had to bring in valentines for the whole class in elementary school? Good times.

The heart shape is surprisingly hard to get right with baked goods. I used a heart-shaped cookie cutter but they refused to be tamed. Relatively recognizable though, no?

Where do you stand on the pie cookie vs. hand pie debate? I’m a big fan of calling them hand pies! Cookie pies get me all confused about what texture I should expect (more shortbread maybe?) and how thick they should be (thinner, which is hard when there’s a filling). Plus, calling them hand pies gives me the freedom to get crazy with pie dough designs!

Cherry filling felt appropriate, as one of my favorite bakes from my first year of blogging was a cherry hand pie. Four years later, and it’s still one of my go-to bakes!

I swapped out the lemon juice in this filling for lime, and added in some lime zest, though sadly not enough to stand out. Prue and Paul would not be impressed. But now we know: don’t be shy with the lime zest!

You’re essentially making cherry preserves, by cooking the fruit down with sugar, corn starch and acid (lime juice). The natural pectin in the cherries along with the corn starch help to thicken the syrup around the fruit so it doesn’t run away from the pie crust. Fun fact: you have to smoosh the fruit up if you want to call it jam.

Another thing that hasn’t changed in four years: nighttime bake photos got nothing on daylight photos. I’ve spared you from having to see my dim and shadowy pie crust process.

Since I planned to attempt a lattice, I used the milk pie crust from my Cherry Apricot Raspberry Pie, originally from King Arthur Flour. It’s so easy to work with! The vinegar slows the gluten formation just enough that you’ve got wiggle room to mess up and re-roll.

I was aiming more for a cherry red color, but I’ll take pink tie-dye any day!

Let the games begin.

Voila! Weaving pie dough is so satisfying.

Make sure to leave some pie crust for the bases!

So. Cool. Eek! I couldn’t wait to try this as soon as a saw it on Thida Bevington’s Instagram. I’m sure it’s not a new idea but it’s new to me and I love it.