“Pumpernickel Cherry Pie” from “Start Here”

Look at that! No, really, LOOK AT THAT.



Honestly, when I pulled this pie out of the oven I took this picture and immediately sent it to my best friend in Philadelphia to say exactly that. It’s a rough-puff pastry, and you can see the impressive height of the dough if you look at the lattice at the 5.30 p.m. position. I could not believe how beautiful it looked. I was, in short, chuffed.



But as they say, after the pride comes the fall.



Unfortunately, while this pie looks impressive (and the hour it took me to stone all the cherries was frankly another feat of patience), the impressiveness did not extend to how it tasted. In short, it tasted weird.



(Now that’s a plot twist you didn’t see coming, huh?)



Having spent a fair amount of time examining what went wrong, I’ve decided that the problem is that although it looks like a chocolate pie crust, which would be delicious, instead it is pumpernickel, which is an odd flavour to have in the pie. It’s possible that because I’m in the U.K. and had to substitute in black treacle for molasses, that it didn’t work. Or maybe a pumpernickel pie shouldn’t really be a thing.



I don’t know. What I do know is for the first time this month, the leftovers remained uneaten until I had to toss them in the compost bin. Alas, you win some, you lose some.



It still looks amazing, though.