Stacked Puff Pastry with Cherries

This turned out great, but with some caveats. First, unless you like it real tart, use dark sweet cherries. They’re canned in syrup and are great. Second, since I was worried it wouldn’t be sweet enough, I wanted to use cake crumbs instead of bread crumbs. Since I try not to just have leftover cake lying around, I bought a blueberry muffin and crumbled it up (looked for one on the clearance shelf, but no luck). I did use an egg wash as the recipe called for, but also sprinkled some sugar on top (again worried it might not be sweet enough).
The episode said that you could cook larger puff pastries on a pizza stone. I didn’t do that, but I do keep a pizza stone in the bottom of my oven to help maintain temperature. Well, after 30 minutes at 400°, the top looked burnt. I believe the pizza stone raised the temperature above 400°. I then lowered the temp to 350°, rotated the pan, took out the pizza stone, left the oven door open until the temp dropped and cooked another 30 minutes. When 30 minutes were up, it looked just as burnt as before.
So I took it over to my girlfriend’s house and contemplated if we were going to bring it to the Sunday lunch we’d been invited to. We’d just about talked ourselves out of it, when I started scratching the crust, and lo and behold, below that char was a beautiful golden brown layer right underneath. We got out spoons and started to crack away at the damaged goods and all our worries were thrown in the trash. The day was saved! Thank goodness for those thousand layers. I don’t usually write reviews, but hopefully others can benefit from my experience and keep from throwing away a salvageable dessert.

I don’t understand why this recipe had no sugar or anything to sweeten the cherries. I made it like the recipe said and regret that I didn’t add anything like sugar myself. It just tastes like puff pastry and cherries. Has anyone else found this strange?

I didn’t have cherries to make this with so I used apricots. Turned out great!

I did a combo of this and AB’s fruit tart. I made the stacked puff pastry base and filled the inside with fresh strawberries and blueberries. I didn’t make a top for it, so I only cooked it for about 25-30 minutes. This was GREAT! I only wish I had put more fruit in the middle – the puff pastery puffed up higher than I expected, so I was left with a thin layer of fruit and a lot of pasty. Next time I will put on more fruit.

Since my BF likes cherry pie, I made this for him. He loved it, and it was so easy. I saw the show and that made it easier to stack it the way it needed to be stacked.
BTW- Alton is right use way more then you think you need.

This is delightful. It freezes well and maintains it’s texture and taste. I used sugar free cherries this time and plan to use other fruit fillings. I also want to find whole wheat puff pastry, if there is such a thing an try that. It’s a beautiful pastry when it comes out of the oven. The only downside was directions in the recipe. They were confusing and required several readings. That made the initial preparation slow going. The next time around it will be a snap to prepare.

Don’t know why you think this rates a medium on difficutly, found it very easy. FYI, there is no indication as to how to prep the cooking surface. I used a parachment paper lined baking sheet. Also, I added about 1 teaspoon almond extract to cut the overly sweet cherries. Oh, yes I doubled the amount of cherries and crumbes. Came out GREAT! served it with vanilla ice cream.

I substituted apple pie filling for the cherries, was delicious, my whole family enjoyed it. Very pretty for presentation. Alton’s show on working with puff pastry and constructing this was very helpful.

I’ve been making pancakes at home for Sunday morning breakfast for my family for almost 10 years. These are THE BEST pancakes I’ve ever made. Super simple and SO good!