Blackberry Pie

Wow, I've been baking a lot lately! I guess it's a combination of not much to do and many willing mouths to feed. But I love having an excuse to bake, and my physique loves that I never get more than a piece of what I've made (even though sometimes, like right now, I mourn that extra piece...). I even doubled this recipe and made two pies; still it's all gone less than 24 hours later.
On to the pie:
My ingredients. The issue with this "blackberry pie": no blackberries, fresh or frozen. They're not a terribly popular fruit over here. So I got a "cocktail des fruit rouges" (mixture of red fruits) at the store--it does actually have blackberries in it.

So I believe it's got blackberries, raspberries, black and red currants, blueberries, and cherries. This is what you'd use to make Rote Grütze, one of my favorite German desserts. If I had put this on the stove, cooked it a few minutes, and served it with vanilla sauce, that would be yummy, too. But we're making pie. Or as the cleaning lady called it, "Crumble aux fruit rouges."

My funny-looking crusts filled with yummy-looking fruit. Confession: I bought my pie crust. It was all-butter and everything, but I'm not doing that again. Another mistake: importing aluminum pie plates. We had to toss them when we were done eating the pie. Oops.

OK, now we've got massive domes of fruit and streusel waiting for the oven. Maida had me worried about mass overboiling, but it really wasn't a problem. Maybe this particular combination of fruit doesn't run as much.


This is what was left this morning. Now it's gone. Don't you wish you had just one more slice, too?

Here's the recipe for one blackberry pie.

Blackberry Pie

1 9-inch deep-dish pie crust (If you don't have a fave, you could try this one or one of these.)
2/3 c. (4.6 oz.) sugar
2 T. "Minute" tapioca
1 lb. frozen blackberries
1 tart cooking apple (Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Braeburn), peeled and diced
2 T. lemon juice (I left this out since currants are already very tart)

1/2 c. (2.5 oz.) unsifted flour (I used part whole wheat)
1/2 c. (3.5 oz.) brown sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
Pinch salt (in my opinion)
3 oz. (6 T.) cold butter

Heat the oven to 350. Weight or prick your pie pastry and prebake it until golden, about 10 minutes. In the meantime, get out a large bowl and dump the frozen berries in it. Add the sugar and tapioca and toss them together. Add the apple and lemon juice and toss that in. Let that sit while you make the streusel.
Get out your food processor (or pastry cutter and bowl) and put in the flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Process/stir until mixed. Then cut the butter into small pieces and add. Pulse/cut in until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with some visible pieces of butter.
Now put your prebaked crust onto a parchment or aluminum-lined baking sheet. Put the fruit into the crust and smooth the top. Then sprinkle it with the streusel--you may want to pack it down a bit. Finally, make a snake out of aluminum foil and use it as a pie crust guard. Now that your pie is protected from the top and the bottom, put it in the oven for an hour. When that hour is up, crank the oven up to 450, take off the pie shields, and give the pie another 8-10 minutes, until the filling is bubbly and the topping is nice and brown.
Chow down with vanilla ice cream or vanilla-flavored whipped cream. And have seconds now, before it's too late.