Easy as pie Berry Pie

So now that I have this pie crust thing down cold (and I really do. Exact same results every single time!) I've been playing with fillings. As you can see from the previous post, the apple thing is good to go. However, I also love berry pie, which is a lot more challenging. It's either too tart or too sweet. Too runny or too gelatinous. And so on. This weekend I set myself to work on the problem.

It seems to me that the biggest problem with berry pie is that it's too much of a good thing. All that flavor comes with a lot of tartness; all that juice requires too much thickener. A lot of fruit juices are mixed into a foundation of apple juice, which supports the main flavor without diluting it too much. So I chopped up a bunch of apples into blueberry-sized chunks, threw them into a saucepan with lemon juice, and started them cooking. I mixed together flour, cornstarch, white and brown sugar, a dash of salt, and spices--cinnamon and nutmeg--and stirred that into the cooking apples. It started to get too thick to cook the fruit properly, so I added some frozen berries to increase the liquid content. I didn't want to add them all since they'd cook down and lose their shape, and I wanted to preserve as much berry texture as possible. Once the apples were nicely soft, I removed them from the heat, let them cool just a bit, stirred in the rest of the frozen berries (1/2 bag blueberries and 1/2 bag mixed berries--blueberry/raspberry/strawberry/blackberry), and set the filling aside.

I rolled out the crust and assembled the pie, dotting the filling with butter before adding the top crust. Since the berries are so juicy I crimped the crust as carefully as possible to keep juice from leaking out the edges (I should have still put a pan or sheet of foil beneath the pie in the oven since it found a crack to flow through). After slashing a starburst pattern in the top I pulled out my cookie cutters and with the leftover bits of crust dough I made a dragonfly and applied it with a little milk to the center of the starburst. Since I still had a lot of dough I cut out some strawberries, dusted them with milk and sugar and scattered them around the top. I decided they looked dorky but left them there.

I baked the pie until golden. It took a loooong time to cool. Finally we got hungry and went ahead and sliced into it--yum yum yum. It was still a bit runny but the strawberry decorations helped soak up the juice.

The next morning, the pie was oh so perfect. The filling had properly set, and offered everything you'd want in a berry pie--lots of rich flavor, not too sweet or tart. Nice texture, stable and silky but not at all gooey. The berries held up well enough to be recognizable, and the apple chunks had soaked up so much purple juice they blended right in. I'd never had berry pie quite that satisfying.

I'd love to give an exact recipe here, but I can't swear to all the proportions. I'll have to repeat the recipe a couple of times to give reliable amounts.

What I do know is the secret to great berry pie. It's apples.