These little beauties are made with sweet and buttery pastry and filled with juicy and sweet fresh cherries.

When cherries are in season, they are so good eaten fresh, but if you are looking to make the perfect summer dessert, then cherry pie is fantastic.

This particular recipe is for individual sized pies, but you could easily make mini pies or a large one to cut into slices.

This recipe makes 6 individual pies or one large one

For the crust:
500 grams plain/all purpose flour
100g icing sugar, sifted
250g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
2 large eggs, preferably refrigerated
½ tsp salt
Pinch of cinnamon
1 egg yolk and a little milk to make an egg wash

Filling:
800grams pitted sweet cherries
Juice and zest of half a lemon
100g soft brown sugar – you may need less if your cherries are super sweet
2 tbs water
1 tbs cornflour
Pinch of cinnamon

Put the flour, butter, salt and cinnamon into the food processor fitted with the steel blade.  Pulse the ingredients until crumbly, add the eggs and pulse a few more times until a ball of dough starts to come together.

Turn the dough out, pat into a circle, wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes, whilhile you prepare the cherry filling.

In a small bowl mix cornflour with 1 tbs of flour together.

In a pan, heat the cherries, water, juice, zest, cinnamon and sugar together and cook on a gentle heat for up to 20 minutes until softened but not until the fruit is falling apart.  Add the cornflour mixture and heat until the cherry filling is thickened.  Leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF

Cut the chilled pastry into two halves and re-wrap one half and put back in the refrigerator.

Roll out the pasty and line the bases of your tart tins, fill with the cooled cherry filling.

For the lattice tops take out the other half of the pastry and roll it out.  Taking a pizza cutter, or a sharp knife and a ruler, cut equal narrow strips of pastry and layer onto each pie to form a lattice, pressing off excess pastry with your fingers.

It’s best to chill the pies again at this stage for 20 minutes

Egg wash the tops of the pies and bake for around 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden and cooked through.