Berry Berry Deep Dish Pie

Happy Valentine's Day! For you, because I love you all so much, I'm posting the recipe for my favorite, favorite, favorite pie. You deserve nothing but the best.

To make this, I looked up 3 or 4 different berry pie recipes, and just hoped for the best in taking a few ideas from each. My main inspiration was Emeril's Mixed Berry Pie, so we'll say this is an adaptation of that. I hope you like it!




Berry Berry Deep Dish Pie

Crust:
2 cups flour
pinch of salt
¾ cup shortening
4 - 6 Tbsp Ice-cold water

Filling:
6-8 cups mixed berries (frozen or fresh) (cooks down to 4-ish cups berries + liquid)
½ cup water
1 ½ cups sugar
¼ cup cornstarch dissolved in ¼ cup water

Method:
Combine flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and add shortening in small chunks. Cut shortening into flour with a fork or pastry blender until flour mixture is coarse and uniform in texture. Slowly sprinkle one tablespoon of icy water at a time over flour mixture, dragging a fork through mixture until it's moist enough to be formed into a ball. Divide ball into two halves, wrap them each in plastic wrap (or a ziploc baggie), flatten slightly, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

In a large pot on the stovetop, combine berries, sugar, and water. Stir gently and bring to a boil. In a small bowl, whisk cornstarch and water until dissolved. Slowly pour into boiling berries, stirring constantly. Stir while boiling for 2 minutes or until the liquid is thickened to a sauce.

(Note: When I followed Emeril's recipe, it called for adding 1 ½ cups water to the berries in the beginning. I ended up with WAY too much liquid, and strained the berries out before thickening the liquid with cornstarch. Then to make the pie, I put the strained berries into the pie crust, and ladled some of the thickened sauce over until it seemed like a good sauce-berries ratio. I had quite a bit of sauce left over this way, and I'm glad I didn't pour it all into the pie.)

Roll each disk of pie dough out on a lightly floured surface to about a 12 inch circle. Fold into quarters to lift into deep dish pie plate. Pour berry mixture into bottom crust, then add top crust, pressing it lightly down on top of the berries. Trim and crimp the edges of the crust, and sprinkle the top with a few pinches of sugar. Bake (on an edged cookie sheet in case of spillover) at 350 for 40 - 50 minutes.

(I didn't trim my edges, I just folded them down and had a really thick edge, which I love. Also, I didn't have enough berries to start with, so I could have made this in a regular pie plate...but then all that extra crust would have been wasted. And the crust is my favorite. Well, the berries too. This PIE is my favorite. The end.)