Life of Pie and the Friday List

My apologies such sparse and sporadic posting these past few weeks; I blame an unwitting conspiracy of heat, school holidays and looming deadlines for 'actual' work. In any case, here's a little pie recipe and some Friday links to keep us all reading and cooking over the weekend. In the meantime, I'm off to do a photoshop course in Sydney tomorrow so will be back with brighter, better pictures next week!

• Raspberries are ripe for the picking right now so I'm pretty keen to try Souvlaki for the Soul's raspberry and almond cake. This raspberry tart also looks just beautiful, as does Tiger in a Jar's video of its making
• And here's another gorgeous little video from the same talented crew, this time it's Betty in Paris
• A lesson in juicing (almost everything) from 101 Cookbooks
• Roast sausages with fennel by Manger (this would be delicious with our venison and fennel-seed sausages)
• 'The big brunch' by Call me Cupcake
• A little armchair travel to Florida via La Buena Vida and then it's off to France for a stay here.
• Orange is celebrating its Slow Summer festival this coming week. Among other things, there's a great night market on Friday, January 25th and a 'day at the beach' on Sunday the 27th out at Lake Canobolas
• Beetroot tartine with marinated caperberries from My New Roots
• I would really and truly love a bowl of this fresh mint chocolate chip frozen yogurt right now. From a favourite food blog, My Darling Lemon Thyme
• Never able to pass by a new granola recipe, this all-nut version looks beautiful. 

Cherry pie with sour cream pastry

Cherries are coming to the end of their season, so to farewell my favourite summer fruit, here's a simple pie that, I think, does them proud.

You could just as easily use frozen or homemade shortcrust pastry here and puff would also do the job. If you prefer, please also swap the cherries with raspberries, strawberries, peaches or all of the above.

4 cups cherries

3 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste

Juice and zest of one lemon

1 x quantity of sour cream pastry (I love Maggie Beer's recipe)

Preheat oven to 180C. Place cherries in a ceramic pie dish or shallow oven-proof bowl (mine is 26cm by about 4cm deep). You want them to completely fill the bowl and mound up a little in the centre. Toss with the sugar, vanilla and lemon juice and zest and set aside. Meanwhile, roll out the pastry and drape across the pie dish. Crimp the edges (here's how)and make a few slashes across the top of the pie. This both looks pretty and gives any steam produced during cooking a nice little escape route.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until the pie top is golden all over. Serve warm with thick Greek yogurt, ice cream or if you're feeling like a true domestic goddess, whip up some cinnamon-spiked custard to pour on and around each slice.