We had friends over for dinner about a month ago and I made this pie from scratch. Even the crust was from scratch. And dare I say that it was the best pie I've ever had? (Can you say that about things you make yourself? Hmm.) Served with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream...it was heaven on a plate. Now I just need another excuse to make it again soon.
I particularly like the "rustic" look of it. After you fill the bottom pie crust with the filling, just press the top pie crust on top however you see fit. There's quite a bit of filling, so I used a 10-inch pie plate that Steve picked out for me for Christmas (thanks, Steve!!)
Easy No-Roll Pie Crust
makes 1 9-inch pie crust *Note that this has to be DOUBLED for this pie.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup (4 Tablespoon) frozen butter that has been grated on a cheese grater *Yes, you read that correctly.
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon cream cheese, at room temperature
2 Tablespoons cold milk
In a medium sized bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. Whisk together.
Add frozen butter that has been grated on a cheese grater and tablespoon of cream cheese. With your fingers, work the cream cheese and butter into the flour mixture, breaking the butter and cream cheese up until they’re in well incorporated into the flour. Some butter bits will be tiny, other the size of small peddles. The dough may even begin to some together in a rough, sandy kind of way.
Combine the milk and oil. Whisk together. Add all at once to the flour and butter mixture. With a fork, begin to combine the ingredients, making sure that all of the flour mixture is introduced to the liquid. The mixture does not need to come together into a ball. Leave it a bit shaggy and dump the dough into a clean 9-inch pie plate (half the dough in this case). With your fingers, press the dough evenly into the bottom of the pie plate and up the sides. Try to get the dough as even as possible, but don’t worry too much about finger indentations. You can’t fight that.
Place the prepared crust in the freezer while you preheat the oven (400 degrees for this recipe) and prepare your filling.
Simple Berry Pie
5-7 cups frozen, mixed berries
1 cup honey
1/2 c. flour
1 c. sugar (optional, if you want it sweet) *I used about 1/3 cup
Press half of pie crust into a large pie tin. In a large bowl, drizzle honey (and sugar, if you desire) over berries and sprinkle with flour. Stir with a large wooden spoon to fully coat the berry mixture. (*This will be very messy and you will be wondering if you're doing it correctly...but trust me, there is no wrong way to do it.)
Pour into pie tin, top with remaining pie crust, pressing firmly into place. Bake in an oven preheated to 400 degrees for about an hour. When the crust in nicely browned and berries are bubbling beneath, you'll know it's done. Allow pie to cool completely before cutting, for a pretty slice of pie. Or, if you can't wait, just dig in, let it melt and ooze allover your plate and spoon and cheeks and devour immediately.
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