Sunday, June 5, 2011

A strappleberry pie a day keeps the doctor away

There were a bunch of apple and strawberry seconds on sale at the farmer’s market this weekend, so I scooped them up.  They are both red, so they should combine well in a pie.  The pie crust was a slight variation on my standard recipe (turbinado instead of granulated sugar).  Also, I need to stock up on spices, so I was unable to try allspice and cloves, which I suspect would go really well with this recipe.  This is the recipe I tried:

Keepin' it chill with the pie crust

280 g flour
1.5 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1.5 sticks of butter (6 oz)
4 Tbsp butter/oil mix
5-7 Tbsp ice water

The butter oil mix is made by melting 2 Tbsp butter and mixing with 2 Tbsp olive oil, then freezing.  This small amount of oil seems to give the crust a nice flaky texture while avoiding lard and shortening.

While the oil/butter was freezing, I mixed the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, and salt) into a pre-chilled bowl, and used a pre-chilled pastry cutter to cut in the butter.  It is important to keep the butter cold, so I returned the bowl to the refrigerator two or three times during the process.  Once the butter was cut in, the frozen butter/oil mixture was removed and cut in as well.  I Let it all chill for a bit, then added ice water (stirring with a chilled fork) until the mixture starts to come together. The dough was separated into two disks (about 2/3 in the first, 1/3 in the second), wrap in saran wrap and chill overnight.  I'm big on keeping things very chill(ed) while pie crusting.

Time to do some filling

2 1/2 Cups shulled and quartered strawberries
3 Cups cored and sliced apples
1/2 + 1/4 Cup sugar
2 Tbsp tapioca flour
1/2 tsp cinammon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 Tbsp lemon zest
2 Tsp lemon juice

I coated the apples with 1/4 Cup sugar, let them sweat for about an hour in a colander while collecting the juice in a bowl.  Then the strawberries were stirred in and it sweat another half hour or so.  I put the sweated liquid in a small saucepan and simmered until reduced to a tablespoon or two.

The apples and strawberries were mixed with the lemon juice and zest.  In another bowl, the dry ingredients were mixed then slowly stirred into the apple/strawberry mixture.

Woo, ingredients done!

I rolled the larger pie crust out and placed in a pi(e) dish.  Then I dumped in the mixture, rolled out the other pie crust and use it to make 1″ thick straps for the top of the pie.  I glazed it with the reduced apple mixture.  This was all baked at 350F for 50 minutes, then allowed to sit in the oven while it cooled down for another hour or so.


It bakes, taunting me!


Done, and almost in to my belly!

1 comment:

  1. Yummy recipe, can't wait to replicate it. Love the Pi pie plate. Fresh allspice is fabulous.

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