Cherry Pie with Chocolate Pastry

To make the pastry, sift the flour and cocoa powder into a food processor and blitz with the butter to form fine crumbs. Add the 4 tablespoons of sugar and then gradually add enough of the milk, processing briefly, to form a soft dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes or so.

While the pastry is chilling, remove the stones from the cherries. This is fairly time-consuming (well, about 10 minutes), but doesn’t require any brain power so that makes the job far more appealing. It can be made quicker if you use a cherry/olive stoner, but this isn’t necessary.

Toss the stoned cherries with the Kirsch and caster sugar and leave for about 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190ºC/fan 170ºC/gas 5.

Mix the arrowroot with a couple of spoonfuls of the cherry juices, and then stir back into the cherries. Transfer to a pie plate or shallow pie dish. Brush the edge of the plate or dish with the egg yolk.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to a circle just a little bigger than the pie plate and drape over the top of the cherries. Press the pastry on to the edges of the plate to seal and trim any excess. Pierce a hole in the pastry to allow steam to escape and then brush the surface with the egg yolk. Scatter with the caster sugar and place in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes until the pastry is crisp and the juices are starting to bubble over the edges of the
pie plate.

Leave for 5 to 10 minutes before serving with ice-cream or custard.

PS… If fresh cherries are out of season, this works just as well using frozen cherries. Leave to defrost in a sieve to remove excess juices and continue as above. The bonus here is that there are no stones to remove because that is already done for you.