Make a Blackberry Pie
Spring is blackberry season in the south, and if you can tolerate the stickers and the heat, pick a bunch of fresh blackberries and throw an easy pie together for dessert.
Contents
Ingredients
- Blackberries, fresh or frozen (2.5 cups for a 9-inch pie)
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 2 pie crusts, homemade or prepackaged
- 2 tablespoons. cornstarch
- 1/4 cup cold water
Steps
- Pick your berries, you can buy frozen and miss half the fun, but you will need about two and a half cups for a nine inch pie. In southerly climates it is not uncommon to see every fence row and highway teeming with wild blackberries in late April through May. In colder climates, blackberries are usually best picked between late July and Early August.
- Wash two and a half cups of fresh or frozen blackberries.
- Put them in a heavy saucepan with a cup and a half of sugar, and simmer until the juice and sugar melt together and reach a mild boil, about ten minutes.
- Mix two tablespoonfuls of cornstarch in a quarter cup cold water until it is completely melted.
- Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling blackberries, stirring constantly, and continue to cook at low heat until the filling thickens.
- Spread a prepackaged or home made pie crust in a fairly deep nine inch pie pan.
- Bake your pie crust about nine or ten minutes in a 325 degree oven, until lightly browned.
- Remove the pie crust from the oven, and spoon the blackberry mixture into it, filling to about one fourth inch from the top.
- Roll another pie crust over the top of the berry mixture, crimping the edges or scalloping them all the way around to form a seal.
- Pierce the top crust with a fork, and sprinkle it with sugar.
- Place the pie in an oven preheated to 365 degrees, on the middle shelf.
- Turn the oven down to 325 degrees, and cook until the top crust is golden brown, about 25 minutes.
- Remove from the oven, let cool for the filling to "set".
Tips
- Bake-an-Apple-Pie-from-Scratch has a great recipe for pie crusts.
- Adjust sweetness by adding more or less sugar. Some blackberries are very tart, some are already fairly sweet.
- Add a tiny amount of water when you first begin to cook the berries if your berries are not juicy enough to allow the sugar to melt without scorching.
- Strain the berries before adding the cornstarch if the tiny seeds are a problem. People with dentures sometimes have trouble with the tiny, stone like seeds.
- Save some berries if you have extra for a cobbler or home made blackberry jelly!
Warnings
- Blackberries are an acidic fruit, so it is best to cook them in a stainless steel pot, not aluminum.
- Blackberry vines and bushes are also known as sticker bushes for a good reason. The tiny barbs can be painful, and are apt to break off if they pierce the skin.
- Rattlesnakes are known to frequent blackberry thickets, so be careful.
Things You'll Need
- Blackberries
- Sugar
- Water
- Cornstarch
- Prepared pie crusts
- Saucepan
- Pie pan
- fork
- Oven
- Measuring implements
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