Thanksgiving Pie!

A friend and I made this cranberry pie for Thanksgiving, based on the recipe posted last week at Faith and Family Live! The recipe Rebecca posted is as follows:

Cranberry Pie:

Crust: use your favorite recipe for a two-crust pie.

3 1/2 c. cranberries, chopped (I run mine through the slicing blade of a food processor just to slice ‘em in half)
1 1/2 T. flour
3 T. water
1 1/2 c. sugar (don’t skimp; cranberries are really tart)
1/4 t. salt
2 T. butter chopped into small pieces

Mix the ingredients together well and fill an unbaked pie shell.
Top with the 2nd crust—use a lattice or cut-out pattern to show off the fruit’s rich color.

I like to use the trick of brushing the crust lightly with water and sprinkling with sugar for a sparkly, golden top.

Bake at 450F for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350F and bake 40 minutes longer.

We added an additional cup of blueberries, both because the filling seemed not particularly filling and because my friend (a baker - I couldn't go making substitutions and additions if he weren't around) thought the additional sweetness would be a welcome addition. We also grated a little bit of fresh ginger into the filling. My friend the baker used an egg wash on the crust rather than water and sugar.

I don't think I'd ever made a pie from scratch before. It was super-easy (full disclosure: I did not have anything to do with making the crust) and turned out wonderfully! The color is beautiful, the pie is delicious, and I would make this again in a heartbeat.

My only caution is that it doesn't travel very well. It's quite runny, and if you can't hold it perfectly straight, you might find yourself doing as I did this Thanksgiving: demanding that your sister pull over, jumping out of the car into a stranger's yard, putting the pie on the stranger's lawn, wiping cranberry syrup off your legs (giving the stranger's grandmother, waiting in her car, quite a show), and then, when realizing that the worst hills in the drive were yet to come, taking off your shoes and using your feet to hold the pie (sort of) still on the floor rather than your lap. And no, that wasn't a trail of blood leading from our car to my aunt's front door, but it was easily mistaken for one. And hopefully, once I get back to school and get this paper handed in (oh, is that what I'm supposed to be writing now? Not blog posts?), I'll figure out how to get cran-blueberry juice out of my car's floor mats.