My great-granny’s cherry pie

The Norwegian all-female group Katzenjammer, of which I am quite fond, has a song called Cherry Pie. I like food-related music, but I like this song in particular, because it has a recipe in it. The lyrics are as follows:

“4 cups of cherries or more, maybe 5 just to be sure
1 cup of sugar or more if the berries are sour
Let your belly say when, when you put in
a good pinch cinnamon

Groovin’, twistin’ your leg, when you add the yolk of an egg
Crumble some butter with four small cups of flour
And in the wink of an hour, if you’re lucky you’ll try
my great granny’s cherry pie”

When I hear a recipe sung to me, and by four cheerful ladies accompanied with a ukulele no less, I can’t resist. I wanted to try it.

There’s one more reason. I’ve got an ulterior motive. Towards the end of the song, they sing this:

“Well listen, once back in 1869
my great grandad walked in and caught her eye
And he´s been doing tumblers ever since he tasted her lovin´ crumbles
She once said to me one day you’re gonna thank me for this recipe
you gotta follow it to the T
it takes more than just a twinkle in your eye
so when you find your guy
invite him in for some pie”

And since my meringue deal never worked out, I figured I could maybe give this one a shot.

All in all, the recipe was pretty good, but it needed a few adjustments. I’m assuming that it had to be altered somewhat here and there, so that it’d fit the metre or the rhyme scheme, so that I could get away with changing a few things. But I’ve tried to stick with it as much as possible. This is what I made of it:

For a sizeable pie, you will need:

• 4 cups of stoned cherries – or about 750 gr (about 4 cans if you’re using canned ones)
• 1 cup of sugar – that’s 200 gr, 150 for the cherries, 50 for the crumble
• a good pinch of cinnamon – 1 heaped teaspoon in my recipe, but let your belly say when
• 3 egg yolks
• 100 gr flour
• 50 gr cold butter

Preheat the oven to 175°C.

Stone your cherries if they haven’t been stoned already. Put them in a large bowl and add 150 gr of sugar, the cinnamon and the egg yolks. Mix well, then put in an oven dish of your own choosing.

Make the crumble by putting the flour, the remaining sugar and the butter in little pieces in a bowl and kneading and poking it into a crumbly mix. Once you are satisfied with its crumbliness, pour it all over the cherries.

Stick it in the oven for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes the crumble should be golden brown and the mixture properly cooked. Leave to cool for a while, then serve with some (ice) cream.

 

Also, you could use the egg whites that you’ll have left for meringues, if you’re really desperate.