Double Crust Cherry-Blackberry Pie

Just to be clear: "double crust" is usually code for "extra calories." Especially when using a from-scratch crust. (I've found that the refrigerated crusts are fewer calories than the homemade ones). And especially when that crust is a 'Tender Cream Cheese Pastry' which includes two sticks of butter and an entire brick of full-fat cream cheese. Oof.

Inside the pie, the nutrition is pretty good - two pounds of berries sweetened with only a half-cup of sugar. The recipe calls for an even mix of sweet cherries and blackberries. The berries are frozen - the recipe calls for them to be partially thawed before baking - which is a very convenient and perfectly passable way to make berry pies in the 11 months of off-season. It would be a gut-busting shame to have to eat all your berry pies ever during the month of July.

I used tart cherries and most of a pound of blackberries, with an ounce or two of raspberries tossed in to make up the weight. I would definitely recommend you go with the sweet cherries, as the blackberries provide tartness enough for the pie.

A word of caution about the cream cheese pastry crust (which, like the pie, is also from Ken Haedrich's Pie): the double crust recipe makes a lot of dough, probably enough for three crusts. I didn't realize this until too late, but it rolls out very thick if just making two crusts, thick enough that I suspect it insulated the filling and prevented it from thickening properly. The crust also came out a bit on the greasy side, but it has promise.

Also on the subject of thickening, I would probably toss in some quick-cooking tapioca the next time. There was a significant quantity of juices inside the pie (but it helped the too-thick crust with a delicious berry juice soak!).

This was the first pie that I've used pie shields on. I added foil strips about 10 minutes before the end of a 60-65 minute bake time and was pleased with the result.

All in all, I don't think this is a bad pie at all; I just think I could do a few things better next time.

Blackberry Silk Pie

For every mountaintop, there has to be a valley, right? We've been hiking along the ridge for a few weeks now with some great pies. This week, however, I think we're off the trail.

Blackberry Silk Pie sounded so promising. I was thinking French Silk - yummy, creamy chocolateness - breeded with blackberries - sweet, tart, berryness - and expecting greatness. Instead, I got a purply wobbly mass in a pie shell - essentially, blackberry custard.

This is the pre-baking color

Custard, yum. Blackberries, yum. Blackberry custard, not so much.

Are we back in January?

The pie started out ominously like the sugar and cream pies I made for two months: eggs, sugar, heavy cream. The only spot of color was a blackberry purée, of which there is extra to enjoy over ice cream later.

The resultant mixture is an odd purple color. It would be pretty on fabric, perhaps, or an iris, but food? Not so much. The custard is poured into a par-baked crust and baked low and slow (300° for 60-75 minutes). Baking doesn't improve the color at all - the light purple inside is covered by a darkened purple puddingskin-like top layer.

Post-bake. It's only slightly prettier in real life.

I couldn't help but think "Barney pie" (or Grimace, I suppose)

Flavor-wise, this pie is okay. You can definitely taste blackberries, but the egg custard matrix is somewhat odd. The texture is like a soft baked custard - I thought it was fine but Tiffany couldn't take it. After my sample slice, we hurriedly distributed the pie to friends. I'll let you know what they think of it.

To sum up, we won't be keeping Blackberry Silk Pie as part of our baking repertoire. Save the blackberries to garnish the top of your plain custard, and I think you'll be happier with the results.

Welcoming Committee

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a brief PSA on hospitality and neighborliness:

This is what you get when you move into my neighborhood.

Apple Crumb Pie - still warm!

We recently had a single mom and her son move in across the way from us, so I thought, "What better way to introduce ourselves than to take her a pie?" I had two bags of apple pie filling (homemade, of course!) in the freezer from the fall and a spare refrigerated crust to be used - why not?

This bag of filling was part-Spy, part-Macintosh, with the sugar and spice according to Pillsbury's Perfect Apple Pie recipe. Seeing as I only had one crust, I looked through Ken Haedrich's Pie to find a crumb topping. The oatmeal crumb (page 200) looked good: 1 cup flour, ¹⁄₂ cup rolled oats, ²⁄₃ cup brown sugar, a bit of salt, and cinnamon. I think the recipe calls for ¹⁄₂ teaspoon of cinnamon; I just shook some in and added ground cloves. Combine with pastry cutter until crumb-y.

The crust and apples cooked for 30 minutes at 400°, then I turned the oven down to 350° and spread the topping over the parbaked filling. As warned in the recipe, this makes a lot of crumb topping; I saved about a cup in the freezer for a future apple crisp. Back in the oven for 25 minutes, et voila!

I hope it tastes as good as it smells. That's the rough part about giving pies away - I don't get to taste them! At least I've still got another bag of filling in the freezer, right?

P.S. - I tagged this as a pantry pie, not because I always have apples around (I've gotten to where I can't stand apples out of season), but because I had frozen pie filling that I made up in the fall sitting in my freezer. I didn't have to make any special plans or shopping trips to throw this together. Just something to think about - if you like a particular pie for which the season is brief, prepare your own filling for long-term storage. Fresh apple pie in March!

Next time - Let's Go Blue(berries)!

Breitbach's Raspberry Pie

I remember one summer, my sister and I wanted to make a strawberry pie. We had always seen whole-berry strawberry pies - you know, the ones with upside down raw berries covered with an ectoplasmic red fakey gel-sludge that sticks to your fork - but we wanted to make a strawberry pie more like an apple pie, with cooked fruit. If I remember correctly, the adults around us tried to dissuade us, but still assisted in the endeavor. I also seem to recall that it turned out okay.

I share that reminiscence with you simply because of the fact that today's pie includes cooked berries of even more fragility than a ripe strawberry. Breitbach's Raspberry Pie, named for a popular café in Iowa, includes both raspberries and blackberries, but it's definitely the raspberries that come through most strongly in the flavor.

This is really a simple pie: berries, sugar, and tapioca in a double crust. The filling is very firm before it is baked, and it is a refreshing shade of deep red-pink. Never mind the little white flecks - that's just the tapioca, waiting to absorb all those lovely berry juices.

And, now it's apparent that I need work on my double crust skills. I failed to seal the edges properly and the filling exploded all over the pan, my drip tray in the oven, and the oven itself (not to mention the top of the stove after I pulled it out AND my oven mitts!).

This is not what your pie should look like.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, and nobody complained about this pie. Trust me, it tastes the same regardless of whether it leaks or not. The raspberry flavor is deliciously intense, although some of my testers found it a bit too sweet and jam-like. I will be trying this one again in the summer with fresh berries, and I may play around with reducing (or eliminating!) the sugar to see how the flavor goes.

I heartily recommend this pie to you - just take your time and close up your crust properly!

Next time: The pie too good to eat.

Blueberry-Yogurt Cheese Pie

Do you like cheesecake? Do you like cheesecake with blueberry topping? Do you like the caloric bomb that (really good) cheesecake drops on your diet?



If you answered, like me, 'yes', 'yes', and 'not really' to the above, you simply must try this pie. The recipe has a lot of steps, and you need to be sure to start this at least the day before you serve, but it's not really as complicated as it seems.

Crust: Prebake a graham cracker crust in a 9-inch pie plate.

Cheese Layer: Drain 32 ounces of the best plain yogurt you can find (full-fat is recommended - I used Stonyfield Farm's Whole Milk Yogurt) for at least 12 hours. Line a colander with cheesecloth, dump in the yogurt, set it over a bowl, and stick it in the back of your fridge.

Berry Layer: Combine 3¹⁄₂ cups IQF blueberries, ¹⁄₈ cup orange juice, and ¹⁄₃ cup white sugar and cook over medium heat about 5 minutes, until the berries have released a good bit of juice.

In a small bowl, stir together another ¹⁄₈ cup orange juice, 2 tablespoons of white sugar, and 1¹⁄₂ tablespoons of cornstarch until dissolved; stir into berries and bring to a boil until thickened (about 90 seconds). Remove from  heat and stir in 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice.

Turn out berry mixture into a wide container (a spare pie plate worked well for me), cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Assembly: Transfer drained yogurt to a medium bowl and stir in ¹⁄₃ cup powdered sugar and ¹⁄₄ teaspoon vanilla extract until smooth. Spoon sweetened yogurt cheese into the chilled pie shell, smoothing it over the bottom and up the sides. Spoon the chilled blueberry mixture over the yogurt and smooth out the top of the pie. Garnish with a dollop of the extra yogurt and long threads of lemon zest (if you're into that sort of thing). Refrigerate at least one hour before serving.

-adapted from Pie by Ken Haedrich

Let me just say that after two months of pies that ranged from white to cream to light yellow, working with blueberries was refreshing visually.They stained my wooden spoon, but to tell the truth, I wouldn't mind dyeing the rest of the spoon that color!

As I started out suggesting, this pie is reminiscent of cheesecake, only lighter. The tang of the yogurt stands in well for cream cheese, and the sweetness of the berries is sufficient to carry the entire show.

This is how your yogurt cheese should look

I will caution you that this pie does not keep - and I'm not just being euphemistic here. I brought the pie together for a Sunday morning potluck, so it was assembled and ready to go Saturday night and stored in the fridge. The graham crust tends to get soggy and weepy after just hours, and the whole thing slumps into a glorious mess. I might try it again with a short stint in the freezer before serving to see if it holds up better and slices more cleanly.

That said, don't be afraid to scoop out a portion with a spoon - it still tastes wonderful even if it's not the prettiest thing on the plate. And the taste is what counts in the end, right?

Some of the last bits. This is how it's supposed to look.

Spies are for Pies

So I got a bit ahead of myself. The week before Christmas, faced with a sack of Northern Spy apples moldering in the corner of my kitchen, I decided to go ahead and make that apple pie I've been psyching myself up for since September. I know it was before my grand pie project began, but if I couldn't pull off a basic apple pie, what business do I have making 65 pies?

Full confession - I didn't do anything fancy. I didn't even make my own crust - a store-bought refrigerated crust worked just fine (and tasted great too). And the recipe? "Perfect Apple Pie" cribbed off the side of the crust box.

So, in to the oven: one double-crust, straight-ahead apple pie. And three-quarters of an hour later, the angels rejoiced. Or maybe that's just what always happens in late December when you pull homemade baked goods from the oven.

Seriously, though, this was one of the best apple pies I can recall. And I made it myself (sort of)! </giddy> I don't know if was just the variety of apple or what, but this was a really good pie. This was what I imagine when I imagine basic apple pie. It will be interesting to try the same recipe with a different apple and see what we get. But that's a pie for another day...

Postscript: These photos are actually from New Year's Eve. I made up the exact same pie, but expanded into the crust slits you see here and the fluted edge. Two things to note:

1. The refrigerated pie crusts have a distinctive 'ripple' at the tighter end of where they were rolled up in the box. I wonder if a little meeting with Mr. Rolling Pin before laying on the crust might remedy this?

2. My crust leaked again. Both times I've made this pie in the last two weeks, it's escaped out the side. (And that, boys and girls, is why I put a cookie sheet on the next rack under the oven rack holding the pie.) Again, my hunch is that a bit of work on the refrigerated crust with a rolling pin would give me a little more play in the crusts - without it, one side always seems a bit short. But it's the tasting that counts, right? We'll just chalk it up to "too much apple-y goodness to stay in one pie shell".