Black Raspberry Pie

Hello!  I hope everyone had a fun-filled Independence Day!  It rained most of the day here, but it wasn't a downpour or anything, just enough to be inconvenient.  But the boy and hubby were happy it wasn't scorching like it usually is. :-)

Anyhoo, we made turkey burgers and corn on the cob on the grill. And I made deviled eggs.  A picnic must around our house.  We also had some leftover Texas Caviar sitting around so we ate that, too.  Yum.

But then there was the question of dessert.  I haven't eaten sugar since our juice fast, but the hubby and kids aren't sticking to the healthy thing quite as closely.  So they wanted dessert.

On that note, my neighbors' black raspberry bushes have completely taken over the back corner of my yard.  The kids like to go out and eat the berries right off the bushes.  I like to bring a few berries in every year and make raspberry buttercream to put on dark chocolate cupcakes (amazing, btw).  But I didn't want to make icing this year, for obvious reasons. So what to do?

Lately the girl has been asking for a raspberry pie (she calls them blackberries...she's confused) because she's never had one.  Personally, I don't care for berry pies because of the seeds.  But because we have so many raspberries right now, I decided to make a pie for her.

Sorry again for the lousy photo.  By the time the pie was done it was dusk.  And my camera wasn't charged, so I used the phone.  And my counter top is mustardy yellow, which doesn't help.

But the pie came out really nice. I was afraid it would be runny, but it wasn't.

The girl said it was the best pie ever.

She's enthusiastic and says that about a lot of things.

However, I caught the boy licking his plate. Literally. Licking. His. Plate. So I guess it was pretty good after all.

I had a very small slice.  It was good.  The seeds were annoying, but they weren't as bad as I thought they would be.

Anyway, here's the recipe.  I didn't take it from one source, so I can't reference.  It's sort of an amalgamation of several different recipes I found floating out on the web.

Black Raspberry Pie

1 recipe double crust pie pastry

4-5 cups fresh black raspberries

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

Juice of 1/2 lemon

2 Tbs butter

Milk

Sugar

-Preheat oven to 425 F

-Roll out half of the pie pastry and line the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate. 

-Gently mix berries, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup flour and salt in a medium bowl until well-blended.  Pour into prepared pie shell.

-Squeeze 1/2 lemon over the berries in the shell.  Dot with butter and top with the remaining pie crust.  Cut vents in the crust to allow steam to escape. Brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar.  

-Put in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, reduce oven temperature to 375 F and bake and additional 20-25 minutes, being sure that the crust does not over-brown.

-Serve with vanilla ice cream if you have some.

Anyhoo, that was all.  It was pretty easy.  The pie wasn't super-sweet, so you can up the sugar if you're into that kind of thing. You could probably even get away with using less, if your berries are sweet; just use a little less flour.

Well, that's all for now.

Enjoy!