Here’s one of the pies I wrote about in the Pies For The Freezer post a few weeks ago. This one’s going to be given as a hostess gift today. To bake it we took it from the freezer and put it into a cold oven. The temperature was set to 375°F and the pie was left to bake for about an hour and 20 minutes. I took it out when the filling started to bubble through the slits in the top crust.
Custard is one of my favorite desserts. It’s hard for me to find anything wrong with smooth, rich custard supported by a flaky pastry crust. This is an excellent custard pie and it’s not too hard to make.
To start with you need a pre-baked pie shell. I used the same pastry I posted about in the Pies for the Freezer post last week.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 cup solid shortening
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 Tbs cider vinegar
1/3 cup ice water
The pastry recipe makes enough dough for a two–crust pie. This pie doesn’t have pastry on top so you only need half of the recipe.
The pie shell has to be baked “blind”. That is, prebaked without the filling. The reason for this is that the custard mix will soak into the pastry before it has a chance to bake, and that would make a very soggy pie. So after you line the pie pan and crimped the edge, put it into the refrigerator and let it rest for at least an hour. If you don’t let it rest it’s going to shrink so much it will be unusable. In the meantime, heat the oven to 350°F.
Take the crust from the refrigerator, line it with a piece of parchment paper, and fill it with dried beans. The weight of the beans will hold the sides up and keep the pastry from collapsing while it bakes. Bake it for 20 minutes, then remove it from the oven, take out the parchment and beans, and brush the whole thing with beaten egg white. Put it back into the oven for 5 minutes to set the egg wash. Now it’s time for the filling.
Custard can be very forgiving as long as you follow some basic guidelines. Add the hot milk to the egg mixture slowly and keep stirring. If you don’t, you’ll wind up with bits of scrambled egg in the filling. The filling for this pie is made of:
3 eggs
1 egg yolk (the one from the egg you used for the egg wash when baking the pastry)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups milk (I use 2%)
1 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
1 Tbs real vanilla extract
nutmeg for grating over the top
Bake the pie for 10 minutes then turn the heat down to 325°F and bake it until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. That will take about 25 minutes. The pie continues to cook after it comes out of the oven, so don’t let it go too long in the oven. The center should be just set when you take it out.
Cool on a rack until it’s room temperature. You have to give the custard a chance to completely set up.
Last week Harriett told me that we had some blueberries in the freezer that had to be used. There were only about 3 cups of blueberries, so we decided to buy a bag of frozen sour cherries and make cherry/blueberry pies, one of our favorite fruit combinations. Since we already had some desserts in the refrigerator waiting to be eaten, these pies were destined for the freezer, to be baked another day.
I have to admit that my pie-making skills are below average. Sometimes I can get a really nice, flakey crust, other times it’s a bit hard and like cardboard. I am convinced that it’s just a matter of practice.
The recipe I used for the crust of these pies was given to my mother by our neighbor, Mrs. Lupian, in the late 50’s or early 60’s. Mrs. Lupian lived two doors down the block from us when I was a kid and was an expert pie baker. She was famous for her pies. The recipe, like all pie crust recipes, is pretty simple:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 cup solid shortening
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 Tbs cider vinegar
1/3 cup ice water
Mix all the dry ingredients together and cut in the shortening to resemble course crumbs. Beat the remaining ingredients, except the egg white, together and add to flour. Stir only to incorporate.
Wrap in plastic and chill for several hours. Roll out and line pie dish
My mom told me Mrs. Lupian didn’t always use cake flour and sometimes left out the egg. No matter what she did, she always made a fantastic pie that drew praise and comments. My mom became an expert baker, too. Well into her 70’s she turned out great pies using this crust. So why can’t I do it every time?
I’ve got the formula, but I don’t have the feel. That’s something that comes with practice and no amount of explaining will transfer the feel for what the dough should look and act like from one cook to another. I just have to keep at it, rejoicing over the successes and accepting the poor attempts as part of my tuition.
Since these pies were destined for the freezer, I rolled out the dough, put it into the pans, and put them in the freezer to harden while I made the filling.
The filling for these pies is pretty simple. We almost always use the recipe off the back of a box of tapioca, and these were no exception. Blueberries, cherries, tapioca, sugar, and a little lemon juice is all it takes to make a great pie.
Once the filling was ready I took the pie crusts from the freezer, filled them with the cherry/blueberry mixture, put on the top crust, and called it a day. They’re in the freezer, patiently waiting for their turn in the oven. One of these days we’ll need a dessert and they’ll be waiting for us. When it’s time to bake they go straight from the freezer to a 400 degree oven for an hour or so, until they are golden brown and the filling is bubbling.
