Oh man. I LOVE berry pie. I can’t stress enough how much I love it. Especially with a giant scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Up until now I’ve only made apple pie, but Thanksgiving calls for something special. Fortunately, Berkeley Bowl had a delicious selection of berries this week, including (of all things) huckleberries! I don’t believe they’re in season now, but this is the first time I’ve seen fresh ones for sale in California. Here’s the breakdown of my berry mixture:
4 ounces of huckleberries, 12 ounces of raspberries, 12 ounces of blueberries, and 6 ounces of blackberries (all fresh).
Another first was my all-butter crust, using the French Pastry Pie Crust recipe on All Recipes. I usually make it with half shortening and half butter, but I always felt a little weird about it. The good news is that the crust came out beautiful, and I’ll definitely be making it this way from now on.
See those chunks of butter? That = flakiness and pure yumminess. For the filling, I mixed the berries with a half cup of sugar, a quarter cup of corn starch, and 2 or 3 teaspoons of lemon juice. I let it sit for a while (in the fridge), and the sugar extracted some of the juice from the berries. Since I wanted to avoid a runny pie, before I added the berries I drained out the juice.
I find that lattice tops are much easier than a solid top pie. I always have difficulty transferring (elegantly) the entire rolled out crust to the top of the pie. With lattice top, I can work with each small strip individually, and it’s also a bit more interesting to look at. Last but not least, the lattice top allows some of the juices to evaporate while cooking, which is great if you don’t want pie soup for dessert. Here’s the final result, and let me tell you that it’s even more delicious than it looks:
