Frozen, Thawed Raspberries In Pie

The photo above is from the second attempt at using up thawed berries.

Last week, I realized too late that my gardening friend's gift of raspberries should not have been thawed, but rather should have been frozen until time to mix them with the other pie filling ingredients just before baking.

My husband and I have reached the age where we rarely eat desserts. Well we confess to regular ice cream portions and 90 percent chocolate pieces.  So maybe I should revise that to say, we don't bake much any more.

However, we invited close friends over for dinner and thought it would be a good time to use the gift of raspberries.

So these instructions are how to "SAVE" or recover from the mistake.

And besides this  comedy of errors, it has been a long, long time since I made a pie.  The small can of Crisco expired 6 years ago.  Besides the age, it also smelled bad so into the garbage it went.

Side note, I have been cleaning out the pantry because our children have threatened to play a game about who can find the oldest item in their parents' pantry.  I am determined to get there first.

We had already been to the store that day and didn't want to make another trip.  We keep butter in the freezer, so decided to use only butter for the crust.  Maybe someone knows how to adapt this, but not me.  I measured out the same amount of butter as if I had used part Crisco.  And on top of that, the butter was frozen.

This was just going to have to fail, that's all there is to it.  Maybe by documenting this I can avoid a repeat.  That is a maybe.

The frozen butter was cut into small slivers so I could get the pastry cutter thru it.  It still turned out too dry and would not stick together.  Added water.

For goodness sake,  it was tough as "all get out" to roll out and did not bode well for eating.

Sure enough it was too tough to cut or chew.

My husband went to the store to buy mini ice cream bars for dessert.  That was one way to save the day.  Bless him.

Once dinner was over, I mentioned there was a choice to be made; failed raspberry pie or ice cream bars.  Our guests chose the raspberry pie and bravely ate it, though we mostly left the tough crust behind and ate the filling which resembled raspberry jam. 

And when I confessed to almost throwing it in the compost pile, they were nice enough to object and took the remaining pie home.  Thank goodness!  They are true blue friends.

No photos were taken.  This was not one of my better moments.

The next morning I had a visit with my 97 year old aunt who is quite in her right mind and willing to share the good old days.  Her mother (era 1901 to 1977) was an expert pie maker.  She was a homesteader/farmer's wife and mother of many with a constant round of guests at her table (including depression plus war years).

Her story was that their family regularly slaughtered hogs and rendered the fat, so there was a dependable source of fresh lard.  Her pie crusts were made of lard, not butter.  According to my aunt, her mother's pies were tender, flaky and she whipped them up in nothing flat baking them in the wood stove.  The first electric stove in their home was in the 1950's.  She much preferred to cook on her wood stove even after acquiring the electric one.

My husband bought lard the next day rather than start a pig farm.

Now it is a few days later and extra pie filling still sits in the fridge. And now I have read the AI instructions on the Internet and added an idea of my own (steps one and two).

1. Strain the juice (about 2 cups) from the thawed berries and thicken (stove top) with two tablespoons all purpose flour.  No photo taken.

2. Mix the soggy smushed berries with the thickened sauce and all the ingredients called for in the "fresh recipe" including the full amount of flour.

3.  Bake the bottom pie crust 7 minutes at 450 degrees before adding the berry mixture.

4.  Bake the pie at 375 degrees for an EXTRA 15 minutes.  Be sure to protect the crust from burning with tin foil or a silicone guard.  Turn up to 450 degrees for the last 10 minutes of baking.

Here is the pastry crust recipe on the lard box:

Before starting I put 7 Tablespoons water in the freezer for quick cooling.  It was way too much.

Next photo shows the 7 minute baked shell.

This is where I will add today's experience in which this pie dough made of lard was tender and easy to roll out.  Wow!  What a difference from the other day.  The pie is cooling as I blog, but it seems promising.  What I can recommend is trying the difference for yourself as it is so striking.  But that would mean wasting good food, so better to take my word for it.

And here is the original "fresh" raspberry pie recipe:

4 cups fresh raspberries 

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup all purpose flour

Juice and zest of half lemon

1/8 tsp sea salt

1 tablespoon butter

Mix fresh berries, sugar, flour, lemon juice/zest and salt.

Put berry mixture in unbaked pie crust, dot with butter.  Cover with top crust (slits) sprinkle with a half teaspoon granulated sugar.  Set the pie pan on a cookie sheet to catch drips.  Cover crust edge with silicone ring or tin foil.  Bake at 375 for 45 minutes.  Remove from oven to cooling rack.  Do not cut until completely cool (preferably refrigerated)or the filling will run out.

I appreciate my sister 's humor when she said I could be the worst pie day competitor.  She makes great pies herself and I continue to be full of admiration.