Inspired By Summer: Basil Cream and Strawberry Pie

Yes, I've been a little lazy about getting this post up. I blame summer. And to be fair, summer inspired it so it deserves a little reward.

I think I was first inspired to try this idea by the farmers market. The perfectly delicious strawberries and fragrant basil spoke to me. In fact, it may have been their idea. And it really is a perfect summer pie. It is light and refreshing while the basil custard surprises those who don't expect it and has won over those who were skeptical of the idea before they tried it.


I truly love this pie and am so proud of this creation. Even if the strawberries and basil ARE responsible for the idea, I'm going to take all the credit for this pie.

Basil Cream and Strawberry Pie

Pre-baked 9” Pie Shell

1 lb. Strawberries

For the custard:

2/3 cup Sugar

3 Tbsp Cornstarch

3 cups Milk

½ cup loosely packed Fresh Basil leaves

4 beaten Egg Yolks

2 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces

To pre-bake pie shell:

Line pie dish with rolled out pastry.

Line with aluminum foil and fill with beans or pie weights. I find it works best to fill the entire pie shell to the top with your weights.

Bake on the bottom shelf at 400° for 20 minutes.

Decrease oven temp to 375°.

Remove foil and weights. Poke holes all around the shell with a fork, twisting the fork slightly as you go.

Continue baking at 375° until the inside is golden brown and the shell is fully baked. Check at five and ten minutes, using the back of a spoon to press down any spots that puff up.

Cool shell before filling.

For the pie:

Wash and quarter the strawberries. (Reserve a couple of the prettiest ones if you would like to use them for garnishing.)

Separate ½ cup of the cut up strawberries. Mash slightly. Mix with remaining cut up strawberries and set aside.

In a medium bowl, slightly beat the egg yolks and set aside until needed.

In a medium saucepan, stir together sugar and cornstarch. And milk and whisk to combine with the dry ingredients.

Add basil leaves.

Heat over medium, stirring constantly, until thick.

Once thickened, whisk about a half a cup of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks, tempering them to prevent scrambled eggs from forming in your custard.

Add egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan while whisking, continue heating about 1 more minute while continuing to whisk the mixture.

Remove from heat and add butter, stir until melted completely into mixture.

Pour mixture thru a fine strainer to remove clumps and basil leaves.

Spread strawberries in an even layer across the bottom of the baked pie shell. Top with basil custard. Refrigerate until set, probably 4 hours is sufficient but I refrigerate overnight.

Garnish as desired with additional strawberries, bail leaves, and/or whipped cream.

For the Winos: Fresh Blackberry Pie with a Wine Glaze

Have you noticed how amazingly good the berries are this year? I think it must be all the rain the west coast has gotten.  


Whatever the reason, the raspberries and blackberries have been better then I can remember for years. And cheap too!


This pie is simply delicious. I made it twice in one week for my co-workers and they adored it. I gave out the recipe to several people, and it couldn't be much easier to make.


So make this pie, and make it soon, while the berries are still this good.

Wine Glazed Blackberry Pie

(adapted from this recipe I found on Tasty Kitchen)

Baked 9" Pie Shell*

6 - 6oz. packages of Blackberries (about 6 cups)

1/2 cup Water

1/2 cup Red Wine (I used Merlot. I think a Zinfandel would also be nice. Use whatever you drink.)

1/2 cup Sugar

3 tablespoons Cornstarch

*The recipe posted on tasty kitchen includes a recipe for a ginger pie shell. I used my standard pie crust recipe, the ginger just didn't sound appealing enough to me to change things up. But if it interests you, give it a try.

Pre-Bake your 9" pie shell: 

I currently do this by lining a 9" pie plate with rolled our crust. Line with aluminum foil, then fill completely with beans or pie weights. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes. 

Then I remove the foil and weights and poke holes in the bottom with a fork. 

Continue baking, poking more holes if any parts start to puff up. Bake until the inside is golden brown and the shell is completely baked.

For the Wine Glaze:

In a medium sauce pan mix together sugar and cornstarch.  Add water and wine, stir to combine with dry ingredients.

Add 1 cup of blackberries.  

Heat over medium heat until thick and boiling.

In a lege bowl stir blackberries and glaze until fruit is evenly coated.

Fill pie shell with mixture and refrigerate until cooled and set, usually 4 hours is sufficient but I generally chill overnight.

UPDATE: This pie and some very tasty looking others can be found on the Summer Fruit themed July pie round-up by You Want Pies With That?

Cherimoywhaaa? Cherimoya Pie

One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is the awesome farmers market I can walk to every Sunday. I like to wander around at every single stand and make sure I get the best of whatever I am looking for. The only problem I have is carrying it all home!

This also allows me to discover new offerings. Like these cherimoyas. I had never heard of or seen a cherimoya but I thought they tasted pretty good so I was immediately determined to make a pie with them. I bought 5 big ones and headed home. (I am not even going to try and describe the flavor, I have heard everything from bubblegum to pineapple.)

I bought them a bit under ripe so I would have a few days to do my research. When they are ready to use they yield just a bit to pressure, similar to an Avocado. They also have big black seeds that are somewhat poisonous and function as an insecticide when ground- I sure was glad I did my research on this because my first inclination had been to separate them from the fruit with my food mill.

A good web search also revealed that there is a pretty standard cherimoya pie recipe floating around out there. It is similar to how I planned to go about making them into pie, using pureed fruit in a custard. The custard usually used for these involved separated the egg whites, beating them, and folding into the rest of the custard mixture in the last step. This produces a very light texture. The only change I made to the recipes I found was to add some nutmeg, because I thought this would work well with the cherimoya.



Cherimoya Pie (seems to be the standard recipe, found on many cherimoya recipe websites)


1lb. Cherimoya (about 1 and 1/2 large cherimoya for me) seeded and pureed until smooth
3 Eggs, separated
1 cup Evaporated Milk
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1/8 tsp Salt
10 inch deep dish pie shell



Line deep dish pie plate with crust. Bake at 450 degrees for 5min. (These are the original directions, which I followed. Based on my experience I recommend a standard par bake until the inside is golden brown. Directions are provided in My Cherimoya Pie Recipe)


However you bake your pie shell, set your oven to 375 when you are done.


Whisk egg yolks, evaporated milk, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, and salt into the pureed cherimoya.


Beat egg whites just until soft peaks form. (Do not do this until just before you are ready to use them, or they will fall.)


Fold beaten egg whites into fruit mixture until combined and no white streaks remain. Resist the urge to stir! Have patience, keep folding. When combined pour mixture into pie shell.


Bake at 375 degrees until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. The custard will puff up and turn golden brown on top. The recipe I used said this should take about 35 min but it was much faster for me (I'm talking 15min, yikes!). This could be a symptom of ghetto oven, so watch yours closely.

The results:
Despite my concerns after it cooked so fast, this pie came out alright. The crust was a bit undercooked, hence my suggestion to pre-bake the bottom crust.

The filling came out pretty good. This pie was very light and fluffy. I cannot emphasize this enough- VERY FLUFFY. And some people really liked that. I thought the texture was fine, it was the incredibly light flavor accompanying it that I was less excited about.

Luckily, I had more cherimoya to use up so I decided to make another. This time I opted to make it using a recipe similar to a traditional pumpkin pie, in the hopes that this would produce a more dense custard with a more pronounced flavor to go along with it.

My Cherimoya Pie



2 cups pureed Cherimoya (from 2 large cherimoya)
1/2 cup Sugar
2 Eggs
14.5 ounce can Evaporated Milk
2 Tbsp Flour
1/8 tsp Salt
1 tsp Vanilla
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1 pie shell



Pre-bake pie shell. Poke holes in the crust, line with foil and weights and bake at 375 for 20 min. Remove foil and weights, then continue baking until inside of shell is golden brown.



I used my 9-1/2" pyrex pie dish, and it worked well. This does not make enough filling for a deep dish pie, but there may be some filling left over if you use a standard 9" pie plate. Just fill it with as much as you can.


Beat together pureed cherimoya, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, vanilla, salt, and flour.


Bake at 375 until a knife inserted comes out clean, approximately 25 min. The filling will puff up above the pie crust, but settles when it cools. The top will turn a light golden brown.

My results:

This pie was more dense then the original recipe produced, but still significantly lighter then a typical pumpkin pie. This must be the way the fruit cooks, but I may try reducing the recipe to one egg in the future to make the texture even more dense.

I felt this method did enhance the flavor somewhat. It still was quite light, but I was happier with what this produced. It tasted good, but I'm not sure it is as good as simply eating the fruit raw.

And at least one person compared it to cheesecake, THAT certainly isn't a bad thing.

Cherimoya Pie

Summer Already? Strawberry Sour Cream Pie

I generally judge produce based on price. If it's cheap, it's probably good. So when I saw the first cheap strawberries of the year, I was thrilled. It seemed a little early, but I figured that maybe all the rain this year brought might account for that. I sniffed the packages, they smelled good and that should mean they taste good. So I bought 2 pounds.

Last year I spent about a month perfecting a fresh glazed strawberry pie recipe but never got around to actually baking them. Since it is still cool enough to roll out pie crust, I wanted to do something baked. Awhile back I had been promised some rhubarb and picked out a Sour Cream Rhubarb Pie recipe, but the rhubarb never came thru.

My interest in the sour cream pie has persisted, so I decided to make one with strawberries.

Unfortunately, I started cutting up the strawberries, and tasting them and they weren't good. They didn't taste like anything! (I still don't understand how they could smell delicious but have no flavor.)

Luckily I had purchased some blackberries the same day, and they were awesome. (Wish I had just stocked up on those. They followed the cheap rule.) I also had some frozen cherries in the freezer. I've always been suspicious of the frozen fruit pie idea but intrigued to try it, it could really open up the possibilities when things are out of season and I figured this was as good a time as any to give it a try.

First Try: Mixed Berry Sour Cream Pie

9” single crust

Filling:

2 cups sliced strawberries

1 cup frozen sweet cherries, thawed

1 cup blackberries

1 egg

½ cup sugar

1 cup or 8 oz sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup flour

¼ tsp salt

Crumble Topping:

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup oats

4 Tbsp butter

Roll out crust and line pie dish, use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust

Line with aluminum foil and fill with pie weights. Bake 20 min at 375°

Remove foil and bake another 10-15 min

Meanwhile, combine sour cream, sugar, vanilla, flour, salt, and egg

Soften (but don't melt) butter for crumble topping. Blend with sugar, flour, and oats using a fork or you hands

Fill pie shell with fruit

Pour sour cream mixture over the fruit

Spread crumble mixture evenly across the top

Bake at 425° on bottom oven rack for 20min, then lower temp to 350° and bake until edges puff and top turns golden brown (about another 15-20min for me, but that is ghetto-oven time, so yours might take longer)

The Results:

The flavor was good, but overall this pie did not meet my standards and expectations. I chose to use an egg in the custard mixture for this pie. Looking thru the recipes some people did this to ensure it would set, and I suffer from soggy bottom crust fear so this convinced me to use an egg. Unfortunately, his produced a VERY firm custard, I was looking for something softer.

Also, the amount of crumble I used completely covered the top of the pie. I was looking for a sparser covering of crumble.

Finally, this really needed a fully blind baked bottom crust. I went for more of a par-bake. Easy fix.

The frozen cherries worked wonderfully though, and may be enough evidence for me to give a full-on frozen fruit pie a try sometime.

Luckily for me, there were lots of beautiful strawberries at the farmers market the following Sunday. And of course, in this case, I got to taste them first and pick out some really delicious fruit. So I made this pie again, adjusting according to my previous results.

My second recipe is very similar to the first one. I decided to use all brown sugar, because I thought that would be a better complement to all strawberries. I omitted the egg from the custard and scaled down the crumble. If you want complete crumble coverage, stick with the previous portion.

Second Try:

Strawberry Sour Cream Pie

9” single pie crust

Filling:

3 cups sliced strawberries

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup or 8 oz sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup flour

¼ tsp salt

Crumble Topping:

2 Tbsp brown sugar

3 Tbsp flour

3 Tbsp oats

2 Tbsp butter

Roll out crust and line pie dish, use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust

Line with aluminum foil and fill with pie weights. Bake 20 min at 375°

Remove foil and bake another 20 min or until the inside is golden brown

Meanwhile, combine sour cream, sugar, vanilla, flour, and salt

Soften (but don't melt) butter for crumble topping. Blend with sugar, flour, and oats using a fork or you hands

Fill pie shell with strawberries and pour sour cream mixture over the fruit

Sprinkle crumble mixture evenly across the top

Bake at 425° for 20min, then lower temp to 350° and bake until top turns golden brown and strawberry filling bubbles from underneath the custard

The Verdict: This pie came out awesome. I love the sour cream custard flavor with the strawberries. The only change I would make is to next time cut the strawberries into smaller chunks instead of just slicing because I think smaller pieces would be easier to eat.

Who Knew: I Love Banana Cream Pie!

I've never really been drawn to banana cream pie. I'm not sure why but I guess I was just so uninterested in it that I assumed I didn't like it.

So then why did I make one, you might wonder. I think I just wanted to make the custard. Because I got a flat whisk and I wanted to use it. What can I say, shiny new kitchen utensils inspire me that way.

There are a bunch of slightly different ways to make custard. I pieced together a couple of different recipes to get one I likes. (It seems that in my pie studies I have gotten really opinionated about my thickeners.)

And lo and behold, I LOVED IT!

 Banana Cream Pie

9” or larger pre-baked pie shell*

2/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

3 cups milk

4 beaten egg yolks

2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ripe bananas

Whipped Cream

In a large saucepan combine milk, sugar, and cornstarch.

Heat over medium, stirring constantly, until thickeners

Stir a small amount of hot mixture into egg yolks

Stir yolks into hot mixture and cook 1 more minute

Remove from heat and blend in butter and vanilla, let it cool a bit

Slice bananas unto the bottom of pre-baked pie shell.

Pour cooled custard over bananas

Top with whipped cream. I whipped 2 cups of cream but 1 probably would have been enough.

*I used a 9” pie, and there was quite a bit of leftover custard and whipped cream so next time I will use my 9 ½” pyrex,but I am not sure if it is enough to fill a deep dish. Of course, you could ways fill in with more bananas if needed.

Like I mentioned, I had quite a bit of extra custard and whipped cream, so I bought some of those packaged dessert cups and had a couple more days of desserts topping them with sliced banana, custard, and whipped cream.

Pear Lovers Pear Pie

The first challenging pie I ever tried to make was pear.

It was my second pie. And my third, fourth, and fifth. Maybe sixth too, I can't remember. And I was never even really happy with it.

I didn't know all the things I know now. I believed that I couldn't par bake with a top crust. I had never even heard of using tapioca as a thickener. I simply didn't know how to prevent a soggy bottom.

To top it off, all the recipes I found were for “apple-tasting” pear pie. And it didn't make much sense to me to try so hard to make a pear pie if it was just going to taste like apple, which came out better with a lot less effort if I just used apples. So I hit a point where I couldn't improve it anymore and moved on.

But in a year of pie baking I had learned a lot. So I thought about trying again this year. I was pretty sure I knew how to get it to thicken up right this time. But I put it off for awhile because it still seemed pretty silly to put so much effort into a pear pie if it was just going to taste like apple.

I looked thru different recipes but they all seemed to be similar to the first one I tried or be combination pies that included a lot of other things I expected might overpower the pears and what I wanted was a pear pie that tasted like pear.

Finally, it dawned on me that the reason so many pear pies taste like apple is because they are flavored just like an apple pie. Cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, and butter. I decided it would be better to make a pie that was seasoned to bring out and accent the pear flavor, instead of overpowering it. So I thought probably just cinnamon and vanilla would be best.

Attempt #1

(This attempt was pretty much futile. I knew I needed to thicken this pie with tapioca, but I was out and feeling too lazy to go get it, so I went without. Talk about setting yourself up.)

6 cups Bosc pears, peeled and sliced (about 6 pears)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup sugar

¼ cup flour

Mix together sugar, cinnamon, flour. Toss with pear slices. Sprinkle vanilla over top, and mix to better combine the flavor.

Roll-out and par bake bottom crust until inside starts to turn golden.

Fill with pear mixture.

Cover with top crust.

Bake at 425 for 20 min, then lower to 375 and continue baking until thick and bubbly.

Results: I could tell during the baking process that the filling was not thickening as much as I had hoped, and the final product did have a soggier-then-desirable bottom crust. The filling wasn't too loose and liquidy though.

On the bright side, I was pretty happy with the flavor. It certainly tasted like pear.

Attempt #2 – Final version

6 cups peeled and cubed Bosc pear (about 6 pears) (peeling is optional)

½ cup sugar

2 Tbsp instant tapioca

1 Tbsp flour

1 ½ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

Milk to glaze top crust

Roll out bottom crust and line pie plate. Refrigerate for 15 min before baking.

Poke holes throughout crust with a fork. Line with foil and fill with pie weights. Bake at 375 for 15 min. Remove foil and weights, continue baking until the inside starts to turn golden.

Meanwhile, toss pear cubes with tapioca, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and vanilla. I prefer cubes to slices when baking with tapioca because the pearls will blend in better then it does with slices. Let the mixture sit for at least 15min before baking to soften the tapioca.

This much sugar produces a mildly sweet pie. If you prefer a sweeter pie, use a whole cup.

Fill par baked crust with pear mixture. It's best to work quickly once fruit is in the crust so it stays crisp.

Roll out top crust.

I find a good strategy for when you want to par bake the bottom but still have a top crust is to cut out shapes and then lay them decoratively over the filling. This method doesn't require sealing the two crust halves at the edge.

In this case I cut out circles. Placed them on a plate to re-chill in the fridge before covering the pie; this makes them easier to work with.

I arranged the circles in a decorative pattern over the fruit, sealing overlapping edges with a little milk.

Brush milk over the top of the pie. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. (I've really been starting to get fancy, huh).

Make decorative venting slits in top.

Bake at 425 degrees on the bottom oven rack for 20 min. Lower to 375 and continue baking until filling is thick and bubbling, about 30 more min.

Results:

This pie came out fabulous. The filling was perfectly thickened and the bottom crust didn't get soggy. I made some minor adjustment to the filling spices and I was happy with the flavor. I really love how it actually tastes like pears!