bumbleberry pie

Early last week, I bought a bunch of different kinds of berries because they were on sale. I also had other fruits on hand, so the berries weren't eaten as fast as they should have been. Then I remembered that I was supposed to bake a blackberry pie for this edition of Baked Sunday Mornings. So I decided to use the berries to make a bumbleberry pie instead, to the great delight of my husband, who 1) love pie more than any other dessert in the world, and 2) has fond memory of, and still talks about, a bumbleberry pie he ate at least 4 years ago.

So, I set out to make the pie as per Matt and Renato's recipe in Baked Explorations, replacing the 7 cups of blackberries for 7 cups of a mixture of blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. Yes. 7 cups of berries! (I never make pies, so this seems outrageous to me.)

I'm not a big fan of making crusts of any kind (although joining this baking group has me practicing), but, with my husband cheering me on, I'm happy to report that the crust part of this pie went really well.

While the crust was chilling in the fridge, I made the fruit filling, adding sugars, flour, lemon juice and lemon zest to the berries. Plopped the filling in the pie crust, dot the top with butter, cover the whole thing with the top crust, egg wash the crust and sprinkle it with sugar. Shoved it in the oven with instructions to my husband to take it out when the timer went off.

When I got home and checked on the pie, the little pool of berry juice that had collected on top if the crust hinted at a thin filling, but I was not expecting the mess that was this pie when I cut into it. Berry Soup. It might have been because I substituted other berries for the blackberries. Or the wrong thickener for berry pies. In any case, I don't recommend this recipe.

We ate some, and it was ok, if you could get over the look of it, but it wasn't spectacular. After it sat uneaten for a little longer, (and after I caught my daughter with a straw trying to drink the filling) I actually "drained" it by tilting the pie into a sieve, and returned the fruit to the pie, discarding the liquid. Still, it didn't scream "eat me, I'm delicious".  It's the first time I had to throw out pie because no one ate it. It was good, especially the crust, but it looked awful! I'm sorry to say that this little adventure did not encourage me to start making more pies. I'm actually a little bit apprehensive, since the next recipe for this baking group is another pie... We'll see if I get to it. If you want to check out how the other members of the group fared with their pie, please visit the Baked Sunday Mornings blog!