Blackberry season – my very favourite season – is here, and with it comes the urge to bake pies. This one in particular came about as the result of a very successful trip to the local blackberry patch – aka, a ditch just up the road from us – plus the discovery of a few apples in the fruit bowl that were getting soft and some local strawberries and blueberries in the fridge.
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The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7, 2013. As we share our collective stories through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity. Visit Valerie’s blog, A Canadian Foodie, on the 15th for a round-up of this month’s posts.
As usual, I’m a few days late with this month’s Canadian Food Experience Project post… but it’s because I wanted to get this recipe right before sharing it. This month, Valerie has asked us to talk about the Canadian harvest and what it means in our lives. For me, the harvest means apples. For as long as I can remember, autumn has brought with it falling leaves and a large box of apples sitting in one corner of the kitchen, perfuming the house with their sweet-tart scent, until either my Mum finally got around to making apple sauce or apple crisps, or I baked them into pies. When I was young, the apples came from my grandparents’ trees, and in more recent years they came from friends of my parents. This year, I scored some truly gigantic Bramley apples from a co-worker’s trees.
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Hannah of Rise and Shine was our October 2013 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she challenged us to bake our own double crusted savory pot pies. Using any from-scratch crust and filling we choose, we were allowed to get completely creative with our recipe, showing off the savory flavors and fillings from our own home or region.
A few days after Thanksgiving, I found myself with an abundance of two things in the kitchen: leftover turkey and green tomatoes, salvaged from my weather-beaten-and-dying tomato plants. I kicked off Operation Leftover Turkey with a batch of turkey enchiladas with green tomato salsa (I used this recipe, doubling the salsa and subbing the tomatillos for green tomatoes – it was extremely delicious), but I still had more turkey to use up. Thanksgiving: the meal that keeps on giving.
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The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7 2013. As we share our collective stories through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity.
So, I’m a few days late for this month’s Canadian Food Experience Project, the theme of which is “My Most Cherished Canadian Food Recipe”, but better late than never, right? I’ve already written about my scone recipe, which is probably my most cherished one, but making pie – pastry in particular – is a close second. And when I’m thinking of Canadian recipes, there’s only one thing that comes to mind: Canadian Living.
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Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! I still can’t believe it’s October and, according to all the store displays and lifestyle/cooking magazines, the beginning of the holiday season. Where the heck did summer go so quickly?
I’m enjoying fall though – I love the cooler weather, the coloured leaves, and the abundance of delicious, harvest food – and maybe I’m okay with the holiday season starting. Heck, I’ve bought my first holiday cooking magazine and I’m already thinking about Christmas baking. Yeah, I’m totally okay with it ;). For me it’s mostly about the food anyway, and a Thanksgiving meal is a great way to kick it all off.
I’ve been in charge of holiday desserts in my family ever since I can remember, so this is the pumpkin pie I took to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. By the way, my mum is a turkey super-star – it is always juicy and awesome. And it has bacon on it. That’s all you really need to know.
The real turkey bacon
Anyway, back to pie. This recipe comes from my trusted friend Martha, and this is the second year I’ve made it. What sets it apart from other pumpkin pie recipes is the crust, which comes out tasting more like a shortbread cookie than regular pie pastry. Rather than rolling out the pastry, you just press the crust right into the pie plate and then blind bake it. 
This is definitely the easiest and best recipe/method I have come across for blind-baked pastry, because it doesn’t shrink or bubble up like other pastry often does.
The pumpkin filling, while quite tasty and nicely spiced, was not particularly special or unique as far as I could tell the last time I made it, so I cut out the regular white sugar and used maple syrup and brown sugar instead. 
I also added a splash of maple syrup to the whipped cream – because what’s pumpkin pie without whipped cream?
Because my mum can’t eat wheat or dairy, I used whole spelt flour in the crust and coconut milk instead of cream in the pumpkin custard filling (she missed out on the maple whipped cream though – next year I might try this coconut whipped cream recipe). The spelt flour gives the crust a slightly toasted flavour, and the coconut milk (which might sound weird) actually pairs really well with the pumpkin, maple, and spices. You can substitute heavy cream if you want, but I would recommend trying it with coconut milk even if you don’t have a dairy allergy!
Modified from Martha Stewart; makes one 9-inch pie
A note on baking with spelt: spelt flour is a cousin of wheat flour, but is lower in gluten so it behaves a little differently in baking – basically, it absorbs less liquid and often turns out a bit crumblier. I usually think of it as similar to cake and pastry flour, but I’m not sure how accurate that actually is. In most cases, to substitute spelt for wheat flour, just increase the amount of flour by 25% (or, you can decrease the amount of liquid by 25%, but this sometimes also decreases the volume of whatever you’re making, so I usually go with the other method). However in this recipe, because there is no liquid added to the crust, a straight one-to-one substitution works.
Preheat oven to 375˚F.
In a bowl, cream together:
4 tbsp unsalted butter or margarine, softened (I used dairy-free margarine to accommodate a dairy allergy)
3 tbsp white granulated sugar
Stir in:
1 large egg yolk
Add:
1 cup whole spelt flour (or all purpose wheat flour, or 1/2 cup each all purpose and whole wheat flours)
1 tsp coarse salt
Stir until the mixture is uniformly crumbly – it should clump together easily when squeezed between your fingers. Press it evenly into the bottom and just over an inch up the sides of a 9-inch pie plate. Freeze until firm (20 minutes – I forgot to do this and it turned out fine), then bake in a 375˚F oven for 15-20 minutes, rotating half-way through, until golden brown. Let cool while you prepare the pumpkin filling.
Preheat oven to 325˚F.
In a medium bowl, whisk together until smooth:
1 14-0z/398 ml can pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
3/4 cup coconut milk with a high fat content (ie, not light – the one I used had 14 grams of fat per 1/3 cup – and make sure you shake the can well)
1/3 cup pure maple syrup (the darker the better – darker = more flavour)
2 eggs, beaten slightly
2 tbsp dark brown sugar (demerrara if you can find it)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust. Bake the pie at 325˚F for 65-70 minutes, until the filling is slightly puffy and just set (it should still jiggle a bit). Cool completely on a wire rack, then refrigerate, uncovered, for at least 6 hours. Serve with maple whipped cream (1 cup whipping cream + 1 tbsp maple syrup).
This weekend being Labour Day weekend, the unofficial “last weekend of summer”, I decided to put it to good use and go blackberry picking. When I was a kid, at least once a summer I would arm myself with a bucket and a stick and get dressed in long pants and sleeves to tackle the blackberry patch in one corner of our yard. I don’t remember doing anything special with the berries once I had picked them, but I just know it doesn’t really feel like summer until I’ve gone blackberry picking – something about the smell of the sun on the brambles, the sticky purple juice on my fingers, and the scratches as proof that I picked these berries myself. So, on Saturday I took a bowl across the park to the neighbourhood blackberry bushes, and about 30 minutes later I had almost two litres of ripe, juicy, black fruit. And I knew exactly what I was going to do with it!
Inspired by my friend Frances, I made a galette (actually I made two) – a fancy sounding French name for a rustic, single crust tart.
I love making galettes, especially with blackberries, and this is the perfect opportunity to share my favorite, fail-safe pastry recipe (interestingly, both my pie crust and Frances’ buck tradition by incorporating softened butter into flour, rather than the usual method of cutting in cold butter).
Frances also pointed out the Amateur Gourmet’s Revelations of the Kitchen Freezer, where Adam shares the idea of freezing things like unbaked scones to be pulled from the freezer and baked at a later date – fresh, hot scones whenever you want them, without any prep! So I also made a batch of blackberry scones, some of which I baked immediately and some of which I froze for later.
Recipe from Canadian Living. I first made it quite a few years ago for an apple pie, and I have not looked at another pie crust recipe since. The only thing it’s not great for is pre-baking without a filling (ie, for a quiche) – because it’s got a lot of fat in it, it tends to shrink and melt down the sides of the pie plate, unless it has a filling to hold it up. As I mentioned, this recipe involves stirring softened butter/shortening into the flour rather than cutting it in cold – not a common pastry-making method, but one that has produced a delicious, flaky, easy-to-work-with pastry every single time I’ve made it, including a variation using ground hazelnuts. The original recipe calls for 3/4 cup shortening and 3 tbsp butter, but feel free to use more butter/less shortening/all butter – the total amount of fat required is 1 cup minus 1 tbsp (or 15 tbsp). I used shortening because I had some leftover from this frosting.
Makes enough pastry for one double crust pie, or two single crust pies/galettes.
In a medium sized bowl, combine:
3/4 cup shortening, soft
3 tbsp butter, soft
Beat until smooth.
Add:
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
Stir into the butter until it looks ragged.
Pour in:
1/2 cup ice water
Stir gently until a loose dough forms.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and if necessary, knead very gently to incorporate any dry flour from the bottom of the bowl. Gather the dough into two balls and press each into a 3/4 inch disc.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour, or until well chilled.
I had pastry for two crusts, so I made two galettes: a small blackberry-peach one for just me and Nate, and a larger blackberry-apple one to share with friends. I used slightly more fruit in the blackberry apple one, but the same amount of pastry for both, so you can be as generous or not as you want with the fruit – just roll the pastry out larger or smaller as need be. As a guide, these are the amounts of fruit that I used.
Blackberry Peach
2 cups blackberries
1 peach, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup granulated sugar, or to taste (was a bit tart – maybe 1/3 cup, depending on the sweetness of the berries)
1 tbsp flour
Blackberry Apple
2 generous cups blackberries
2 cups peeled, sliced apple
1/2 cup granulated sugar, or to taste
1 heaping tbsp flour
Gently mix together the fruit, sugar, and flour – try not to mash the blackberries.
Preheat the oven to 425˚F.
Roll out a disk of pastry on a lightly floured surface into a 10″-12″ circle.
Transfer the pastry to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and pile the fruit filling in the middle of the pastry.
Fold the edges of the pastry up over the fruit…
…or make pleats by crimping the pastry with your fingers.
Brush the pastry lightly with heavy cream or an egg beaten with a splash of milk, and sprinkle the whole thing with a little bit of sugar. Bake at 425˚F for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325˚F and bake for 50-60 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly. Cool slightly before serving.
Blackberry peach
Blackberry apple
These are a variation on my trusty Home Ec scones.
Preheat the oven to 425˚F.
Mix together:
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
Cut in 3 tbsp cold butter with a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
Toss in a handful of blackberries and stir gently to coat them in flour.
Mix together:
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp liquid honey
(Don’t worry if the honey doesn’t totally dissolve.) Pour the milk into the flour mixture and stir briskly with a fork until it all comes together in a wet dough. Try to incorporate all the flour without smushing the berries too much.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, sprinkle it with more flour, gently pat it down, and fold it in half on itself.
Repeat two to three more times, then shape the dough into a circle about 3/4 inch thick. Cut it into 6 wedges and place them on a baking sheet.
Brush the tops with a little cream, sprinkle them with sugar, and bake at 425˚F for 10-12 minutes until golden, OR stick the whole baking sheet in the freezer until the scones are solid, then store them in a freezer bag to pull out whenever the craving for freshly baked scones hits you – just bake them for a few extra minutes. (I baked two and froze the remaining four.) 
Serve hot, slathered with butter and honey.
Happy summer!
I have been meaning to share my favorite pie crust recipe here for a while now, but every time I’ve made it lately, I’ve been experimenting with it somehow, with varying degrees of success. For Easter I decided to experiment once more with a hazelnut pastry for strawberry rhubarb pie, and I have to share this variation on the pie crust recipe because it was so good. For the strawberry rhubarb filling, I used this recipe from Simply Recipes, which was a good starting point, but I have some changes I’d make for next time. First, less sugar – 1 cup of sugar to 4 cups of fruit was too sweet for my taste. I like a bit of tart rhubarb flavour, and this was quite sugary. Second, more fruit – probably 4 cups of rhubarb and 2 of strawberries. Third, the recipe used instant tapioca for the thickener, which gave the filling a kind of tapioca-pudding texture (little tiny gelatinous balls). Nate said he couldn’t tell, but I wasn’t loving it – not that it tasted bad, I would just prefer a smoother texture from, say, corn starch. And fourth, I would add some lemon zest along with the orange zest to the filling. So once I have all that figured out and perfected, I’ll share my recipe. In the meantime: hazelnut pastry!
This is a super easy-to-make pie crust, made in a slightly different way than usual: instead of cutting cold butter in to flour, you actually cream the room-temperature shortening/butter, then stir in the flour until the dough looks ragged. I know – I was skeptical the first time I made it too, but it was so easy to work with and turned out SO flaky and delicious that it has become my go-to pastry recipe for everything that needs a crust. The only thing it doesn’t work for is single crust pastries that are blind-baked (pre-baked) before filling (like a quiche), because the large amount of fat in the dough causes it to melt and shrink down the pie plate. But for pies that you fill before baking (especially double crust), it is fantastic. I also like that it is easily made entirely by hand – you don’t need a food processor to make good pastry!
I had a strawberry rhubarb pie a few years ago that was topped with a sort of almond struesel, which gave me the idea of adding nuts to the pastry. I like the assertive flavour of hazelnuts, and thought they would pair well with strawberry and rhubarb, so I ground some up and substituted 1/2 cup of the flour for the ground hazelnuts. When I added the water, I ended up with a slightly wetter dough, but by sprinkling it with flour and folding it several times on a floured surface, I got a dough that was just the right consistency and baked up really nicely into lots of light, flaky layers.
And lastly, I wanted to show off the gorgeous pinky-red strawberry rhubarb filling, so I went with a lattice top. It looks impressive and is actually really easy to do!
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