Not As Easy As Pie: Learning About Turnovers

I baked my first and last cherry turnovers! These rude pastries refused to suck it up and politely bake. Give me well behaved cookies or a disciplined pie anytime!

The mushy fruit yielded an unpleasant texture.

Perhaps the turnovers thought their lineage entitled them to special treatment. Ancestors of my dessert, pasties, appeared in “The Canterbury Tales.” Maybe I should have followed the recipe more carefully and not used the left-over frozen cherries stuck in the corner of my freezer.

The filling leaked from the pastries and formed a mind meld.

Perhaps the turnovers thought their tough constitution wasn’t respected. These rugged pies, the meat variety, fed Cornish tin miners when they paused for lunch. Maybe I should have cut the vents wider and deeper. Somehow the vents resealed causing mini eruptions. 

The crust bordered on blackened.

Perhaps the turnovers thought their popularity had been ignored. There are two national turnover days. The apple variety celebrated on July 5^th with the cherry flavored noted the next month on August 28^th. I decided to bake turnovers to free space in the freezer. The puff pastry box long outstayed its welcome. Maybe I should have had a more watchful eye on the freezer AND the oven.

In the end vanilla ice cream negotiated peace. I scooped Breyers over the leaky, mushy cherries in the blackened crust and the dessert forgave my neglect. 

As I savored my rude dessert, I considered what to make from the box of Phyllo that I found when I put the ice cream away. 

Anita Borgo also writes for little adults (called children). Check out her short story collection Operation Hopper and Other Tales and the accompanying discussion guide on Amazon.