Pinterest Challenge: Pie + Crust

I can't remember now how I stumbled across The Militant Baker's site, but I'm so glad I did! Among other things I needed to read that day, I found her recipe for Honey Chamomile Peach Pie. Which sounds absolutely heavenly, doesn't it? I pinned it for later.

Well, this weekend was that later.

I did a lot of wandering from her recipe. I'm not sure where to draw the line between claiming I followed her recipe loosely or claiming this was inspired by her recipe. But it certainly isn't a direct copy of any of her directions...

The first step is making a pie crust. Something I've never done before. I didn't have ingredients for the first several pie crusts I looked at. Eventually I found a recipe I had the ingredients for: Perry's Plate's Easy Whole Grain Shortening-Free Pie Crust.

I loved the suggestion of putting the butter through a cheese grater, to get small, easy to work with pieces. Sadly, neither my kitchen nor my mom's kitchen seems to have one anymore. But, my search for one did reveal an onion chopper. It wasn't easy, and it's nothing I recommend (I think my hand is going to be bruised from the effort of pulling the pieces apart after each 'chop') but it worked to get the nearly frozen butter into small cubes.

If you look carefully, you can see a few buttery pieces in the flour-mixture.


Mixing the dough, and rolling it out were both painless processes after the onion chopper business!

After trimming the edges of the crust to fit the pan, I put it in the oven at 375 while I turned my attention to the filling.

I have no idea what kind of fruit I used. My parents bought and planted the tree thinking they had a nectarine tree. This is the first year it's produced enough fruit for us to have any. And we're suddenly not sure if it's nectarines or peaches. Or something else entirely.

For a tiny little tree, it's producing a lot of fruit this year - so I knew we had more than enough for me to experiment with in a pie.

I cut the fruit into bite sized pieces and tossed it in a pot with the called for honey, brown sugar, corn starch, and chamomile tea.

There's also a little vanilla extract in there, since I didn't have any other vanilla.

The little mystery fruits cooked down very quickly, and seemed wetter than what I really wanted to work with. So, I used a slotted spoon to spoon as much fruit as possible into my slightly pre-cooked crust, leaving behind quite a bit of the delicious juice mixture.

Awaiting filling

I had thought to do a whole pie crust across the top, but as I looked at the amount of filling (which seemed a bit scant) and the amount of crust, I changed my mind. This had the added benefit of giving me lots of little pieces to test for done-ness, and to eventually dip in the leftover juices.

I did brush the top pieces, the edges, and all the little pieces with a bit of egg mixture, then sprinkled on just a touch of sugar - mainly for the trimming pieces.

Fifty minutes later, I pulled it out of the oven.

Letting it cool for thirty minutes before cutting into it was the most difficult part. As much as the filling oozed, I should have waited longer. But I was too curious to see how it turned out - and eating the pie crust pieces in the leftover juice was only making me more curious.

The crust is a little nuttier and less flaky that any other pie crusts I've had, more like a graham cracker crust really. Fortunately, the honey + mystery fruit is strong enough that isn't a problem. I was also relieved to find that it was cooked throughout, no gooey pie crust surprise waited at the bottom of the plate. Whew!

I love the filling flavor. Whatever that mystery fruit is, it still worked well with the honey and chamomile, and the cooked down texture was perfect for pie. I'm not quite sure about the crust on top - it certainly makes things more difficult to cut and eat, but I also think the filling needs both layers of crust to have the right balance.

It's a little early to have reviews back from everyone who has tried it - but so far I've heard only positive things. I won't be doing it again tomorrow, though my husband suggested we should, but I'm pretty pleased with my first venture into making pies and pie crusts.

I hope to try this filling again soon, but probably with a different type of crust.