Hey Look! It's a Pie: A Blackberry Pie with Pecan Crumble

Yep, I made a pie. After my pie success last year (my first ever pie) and my pumpkin pie of last, well…Thanksgiving, I decided the time had come for another adventure in pie baking. This one was blackberry and raspberry (3/4 blackberries and 1/4 raspberries), lightly spiced and covered with a pecan-crumble.

This pie dough was also very easy to make and work with. I used a food processor but you really don’t need one. In fact, the original recipe just called for working the butter and shortening into the flour with your fingers.

This pie is based on a recipe by Caprial Pence but I changed the spice ratios (at 1 teaspoon each, the original seemed like it would be a little overwhelming) and used a few raspberries as I didn’t have quite enough blackberries. I also used way less butter in the crumble topping. The original called for 1 cup (two sticks). I only had 1/2 a stick (1/4 cup) butter left after making the crust, so that’s all I used. It was fine. It was better than fine — it was great. The result was a luscious inside, slightly crunchy on top, flaky crust, piece of gastronomic heaven on a plate, with less fat than it could of had.

Go find some berries (I imagine strawberries would work great here too) and pop this together. It’s very easy and you could be eating pie tonight.

Blackberry Pie with Pecan Crumble (and a few raspberries)
Pie Dough:
1 1/3 cup unbleached, AP flour
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 tsp salt
6 tbsp cold water

Filling:
6 cups blackberries
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger (ooops! forgot this originally!)
Pinch (less than 1/8 tsp) allspice
Zest 1 lemon

Topping:
1/2 cup flour
1 cup pecans (some chopped, some whole)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup unsalted butter (or, use up to 1/2 cup if you want, but 1/4 cup worked very well for me)

Pre-heat oven 375 degrees. Place the flour, shortening, butter, and salt in a bowl and mix until you form a coarse meal. Add the cold water and mix just until moist.

Alternatively, use a food processor to pulse the butter and shortening into the flour. Add the water a little at a time and stop pulsing when it’s crumbly but will hold together.

Form into a ball, wrap with plastic and let rest for 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll on a well floured board until an 11 inch circle. Roll the dough onto the rolling pin to lift up and place in the pie plate.

Place the dough in the plate. Make sure it’s smoothed out a bit along the sides so that shrinkage is minimal. Trim the dough to about an inch overhang.

Fold under and crimp the edges. Now it’s ready to fill.

Speaking of the filling…
Prepare the filling and topping while the pie dough ball is being refrigerated. I started by getting my topping ingredients together — flour, sugar, pecans, oatmeal and vanilla, as well as my dry ingredients for the filling — flour, cornstarch, spices and zest.

Place the berries in a bowl add the sugar, cornstarch, spices, lemon zest and gently mix well. Some berries will smoosh a bit. It’s no big deal. Place in the prepared crust and set a side. Add the butter to the pecans and flour mixture and combine until you form a coarse meal. Top the pie with the pecan mixture.

Be sure to put the pie pan on a baking sheet at the blackberry filling will probably bubble out a little. Place it all in the oven and cook for 15 minutes at 375 and then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees. Cook about 40-45 more minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool. It will be bubbly and golden and you will take pictures of the pie and e-mail them to your significant other who is still at work. You will both be in awe of the pie.

Serve with vanilla ice cream and be amazed at the combination of fruit, flour, sugar and spices. Oh, yeah, and the ice cream.

Tuesday, there will be Green Tea Salmon and Wednesday should be about Spinach and Arugula Fritters. Thursday-Sunday will be a mini-vacation for Je Mange la Ville, as we’ll be going to Port Townsend for a couple of days.

But coming up next week: Chile-Grilled Halibut with Fresh Pineapple Salsa, Nectarine, Goat Cheese and Spinach Panini and a few other surprises…