rustic golden raspberry pie

We inhereted our neighbor's wonderful golden raspberries this year. We have been able to fill a strawberry container with them every other day, so I wanted to find a way to showcase them and share them with my friends. What with this month's challenge and all, I decided to make them into a pie. They have a wonderful sweet/tart taste, so I wanted to do as little to them as possible and keep the berries as intact as possible, because they're gorgeous. (Plus, they look a little brownish as jelly.) I decided to use the filling from this recipe for raspberry pie, as it did not ask you to pre-cook the berries and added very little to them.

I don't know why I always have the urge to do something new and different when I make things for this challenge. Some day, I will stick to something I know I do well. For instance, I always make a good pie crust using my trusty Better Homes and Gardens recipe. It has never failed me. But I wanted to try something different. And I wanted my pie to be beautiful. So I did what anyone would do: I Googled "beautiful pie." Happily, nothing weird came up in the images and I was dazzled by the array. I particularly liked the rustic pies. I like how they scream "hand-made!" They seem like the pie equivalent to a round bread loaf. And I like those, too. It seemed perfect for my little-altered raspberries.

Also, as we would be entering a pie-baking contest with around 40 tasters, I wanted to make small pies for people to just grab without having to cut a pie into 40 pieces, which ruins its aesthetic. And little rustic pies sounded lovely. We made 3 for our trial run and used this recipe to make the crust.

~ turning the pie shell with my favorite kitchen knife ~
(Other tools would work well, too. Transfer these to a cookie sheet using a spatula.)

Raspberry Filling

• 3/4 to 1 cup sugar
  
• 1/3 cup flour
• 5 cups raspberries
  

Butter Pastry Dough

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8-ounces (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup ice water
• 2 tablespoons cold butter

We altered this by substituting about 2/3 c. whole wheat flour, because I always substitute some whole wheat flour and because I wanted this to really look rustic.

Optional:

• 1 egg white + a splash or two of water as an egg wash
  
• sugar to sprinkle on top

(I did both options, brushing on the egg wash and sprinkling with sugar about 10 minutes before the pie was done. I also brushed any juices that escaped during baking onto the crust, as that was the best part in our trial run.)

Bake
375 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown

~ rustic mini pies ~

The trial run was wonderful. Our friends who came over to taste and offer suggestions only suggested ice cream. It was a great, unadulterated pie. The berries were still a wonderful sweet-tart...just how I like them!

But when the day came for the big pie competition, I tried to make the pies individual-sized in order to devote more of the party time to partying instead of cutting pie. THAT was a bad idea. It turns out that there is a tipping point for the crust to maintain its shape, no matter how much you refrigerate it before-hand. Apparently, it is somewhere well short of a 90-degree angle. When I peeked in on my miniature beauties, they were all discs! I hurriedly oiled and floured a muffin tin (not sure whether that was necessary...) and plopped the little pies in! They were good, but were weighted toward crust on the crust-to-fruit ratio. Micro rustic pies: cute, but impractical.

~the saving of the baby pies~

Party time was approaching and I had neither time nor sufficient muffin tins to make more personal pies. With time running out, it was time to make a behemoth pie! This was to be the mother of all rustic pies! (I don't know how much this was, but I do know I something like doubled the recipe.)

~mother of all rustic pies~
(before turning the sides up, obviously.)

And so it was. We entered the mother and her babies in an annual pie baking contest among friends. Ours was the only really tart pie. No one was in the mood for a tart pie that day, I guess. Even I had to send my vote elsewhere, but this is a great pie when you're in the mood for a tart one. Plus, it's great for spring and fall, as our raspberry bushes produce spring and fall crops!

~another look at the beautiful golden raspberry rustic pie family~