Six Inch Pie

A 9" pie can be too much for two people who are trying to be reasonable. You can buy half-sized pie plates, but I have a 6" diameter cast iron skillet which is half the area of a 9" pan according to my basic geometric calculations. While I sometimes use a press in oil crust (my dislike of rolling pastry is well documented) I decided to do an all-butter rolled crust for this, which turned out to be pretty manageable to roll and shape for this smaller pan. I halved the recipe for a single crust from my trusty Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook:

Single Crust for a 6" pie

• 1/2 C plus 2 Tbsp flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/6 c (scant 3 Tbsp) butter
• 2 Tbsp cold water

For the filling, I used some of our frozen home-grown sour cherries, lovingly picked and pitted this summer and halved the filling and crumb-top from this "Best Tart Cherry Pie" recipe. The half recipe worked well for this pan size. Despite halving the recipe, it doesn't halve the bake time- I ended up baking this for 70 min. Next time, reduce the amount of crumb topping.

Crumb topping on- ready to bake