Instructions

1. For the pastry, mix sugar and salt into flour in a medium sized bowl. Add the cubes of cold butter and use your fingertips to rub it into the flour. Tip: This is a very flaky pastry so you won’t likely get a fine breadcrumb-looking mixture, more a mixture that looks like a mix of breadcrumbs and larger pieces of butter coated in flour.
2. Add 3 tbsp of the ice-cold water and mix in using the tip of a blunt knife. Once mostly mixed through, use your hands to squeeze and bring the dough together in the bowl. Tip: To avoid over-kneading, we find it best to squeeze the mixture together against the sides of the bowl rather than a kneading action, this keeps the little bits of butter intact.
3. If the dough is extremely dry with a lot of dry flour left at the bottom of the bowl, add another ½ – 1 tbsp cold water and work into the dough.
4. Tip dough out onto a large piece of parchment paper and bring together to form a thick disc. Fold the parchment over the dough to cover then chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Tip: The dough can be made a few days ahead and stored in the fridge until needed.
5. Prepare the cherries while the dough is chilling. Rinse cherries and pat dry, then remove stems and pits. Tip: A cherry pitter is a handy tool for the task, but if you don’t have one, or you find your cherries are too plump to fit, very simply use a small sharp knife to cut the cherry in half, running the blade around the cherry against the pit. Gently twist the two halves and remove the pit from the half it’s still nestled in.
6. Place pitted and halved cherries in a medium size bowl then sprinkle with sugar (1 tbsp if your cherries are very sweet, up to 2 tbsp if they’re a little sour) and squeeze over some lemon juice. Use a spoon to give them a quick mix. Cover the bowl and leave to macerate until needed.
7. To make the galette, pre-heat the oven to 200°C / 180°C fan assisted. Place a large flat baking sheet inside on the middle rack of the oven to heat up. Tip: You can also turn a large roasting dish over so that the underside is facing up.
8. Remove pastry from the fridge and roll out on the parchment paper with a rolling pin into a large round shape about 5mm thick. Tip: Try avoid dusting too much with flour, if the dough does start sticking to the rolling pin, very lightly rub a bit of flower on the rolling pin itself.
9. Transfer rolled out pastry, still on the parchment paper, to a large baking tray.
10. Sprinkle the 1 tbsp flour over the middle of the pastry, this will help thicken the juices while baking, then tip out the macerated cherries on top and spread cherries out over the pastry in an even layer, but keeping a 4-5cm border around the edges of the pastry (these will be folded over to form the galette).
11. Fold the pastry border up and over the filling starting at 6 o’clock and working your way around the pastry until you’re back where you started folding, crimping the pastry together where the folds meet to help them stick.
12. Brush the pastry border with beaten egg and sprinkle with flaked almonds, if using, and Muscovado sugar.
13. Place tray directly on top of the hot tray already in the oven and bake until pastry is golden, 30-35 minutes.
14. Remove from oven and leave to stand for about 5 -10 minutes before serving with scoops of ice-cream or big dollops of whipped cream. (Although the juices of the cherries will thicken slightly with the addition of the flour, the pastry will still absorb some of the liquid, but the pastry should be cooked through with the help of the hot tray).