These delightful little pastry pockets are both delicious and portable!
Prep Time30 minutesmins
Cook Time30 minutesmins
Total Time1 hourhr
Course: Dessert
Keyword: vegan, vegetarian
Servings: 8pies
Author: Alanna Peterson
Ingredients
Filling Ingredients
10ouncescherries, pitted; frozen or fresh
2Tbspsugar
1Tbsparrowroot or cornstarch
3Tbspwater
Crust Ingredients
1cupall-purpose flour
1/2tspsea salt
5Tbspcoconut oil, solid
3-5Tbspice water
Instructions
Make the Filling
Combine cherries and sugar in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until mixture starts to simmer, about 5 minutes.
Whisk together arrowroot/cornstarch and water in a small bowl, then pour into the cherries, stirring constantly. Cook another minute or two until thickened.
Remove from heat and allow to fully cool to room temperature. If you're pressed for time, you can stick the saucepan in the freezer and stir every so often. Just make sure you don't forget it's there! (Not that I've ever done such a thing....)
Make the Crust
Preheat the oven to 375° F.
While the filling cools, make the crust. Mix together the flour and salt, then cut in the coconut oil using a pastry cutter or two knives. Note, the oil needs to be solid for this recipe, so if it's summer and your coconut oil has melted in the heat of the house, you'll need to put it in the fridge until it firms up.
Once the coconut oil has been incorporated (make sure there aren't any large chunks remaining; the mixture should look sandy), add the water a tablespoon at a time. Mix with a fork until the mixture starts to come together. You don't want to add too much water or the crust will lose its flakiness, but if you don't add enough it will be difficult to roll out, so stop adding water when you are able to form the dough into a ball.
Roll out the dough. At this point, you have several options. You can either cut it into squares for triangular pies, or use an upturned bowl like a cookie cutter to cut out rounded pies. The bowl method tends to make more uniformly sized pies (unless you break out the ruler, I guess) but involves more rolling since you have more scraps. Up to you!
Place the dough squares/circles onto your baking tray and fill each one with a few tablespoons of the cherry mixture. Try not to overfill or you'll have a lot of juice spilling out when you seal them up.
Seal the edges with a fork and slice a small opening in the top to let steam escape. You can also sprinkle the top of the pies with sugar at this stage.
Bake for 25-30 minutes at 375° F. When finished, the bottoms should be golden brown and there will probably be a few delicious little pools of cherry filling bubbling on the pan.
If desired, you can drizzle with a simple glaze (confectioner's sugar mixed with a small amount of non-dairy milk and/or vanilla extract). Or just serve as is once they've cooled for a few minutes. Enjoy!