Sugarless Apple-Blackberry Pie

Suzanne and I, hippies that we are, are working on drastically reducing our sugar intake; which, as you might imagine, creates some challenges in the pie-making department. However, there are options. This one, for instance, from Ken Haedrich's book Pie (in case you're wondering, it's a book about pie), uses apple juice as a sweetener, and is pretty delicious (though next time around I think I'll slip some honey in there just to make it deliciouser).

I made the bottom crust using Carolyn's technique, but made the top one using Ken Haedrich's half-butter, half-shortening recipe. (Explained beautifully here).

In the book, this recipe is called "Liz Smothers's Sugarless Apple-Berry Pie", and credited to the "matriarch of the Julian Pie Company" (which I recall fondly from my days living in San Diego). The recipe looks like this:

(makes 8-10 servings)
1 recipe Basic Shortening Pie Pastry, Double Crust, sugarless

Filling:
6 cups peeled, cored, sliced Golden Delicious Apples
1/3 cup frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed (or 3/4 cup apple juice)
2-3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1-1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries, raspberries, or hulled/sliced strawberries
2 Tbsp cold unsalted butter cut into small pieces

Glaze:
1 large egg white whisked with 1 Tbsp water

1. Prepare pastry (omit sugar). Refrigerate until firm enough to roll (about 1 hr?)
2. On a sheet of lightly floured wax paper, roll the larger portion of pastry into a circle with a floured pin. Invert over a pie pan and peel off the paper. Tuck into pan without stretching and let the overhang drape over the edge. Refrigerate 15 minutes.
3. Combine apples, apple juice, flour (2Tbsp if concentrate, 3 if juice), and cinnamon, in a large bowl. Set aside 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
4. On another sheet of lightly floured wax paper, roll the other half of the pastry into a slightly smaller circle. Pour the berries into the chilled pie shell, making a layer. Turn the apples into the shell and smooth with your hands. Dot the filling with the cold butter. Lightly moisten the rim of the pie shell; invert the top pastry over the filling, center, peel off paper, and press together with bottom pastry around the moistened rim. Trim with scissors or a paring knife, leaving a 1/2" overhang all around; sculpt the overhang into an upstanding ridge. Poke steam vents into the top of the pie with a fork or knife. Brush the top with the egg mixture.
5. Place on a middle oven rack and bake 45 minutes, then rotate 180 degrees. Put a foil-covered baking sheet on the rack below to catch drips. Continue baking until the top of the pie is golden-brown, apples are tender (check with a skewer), and juices bubble through the vents (about another 30 minutes).
6. Transfer to a wire rack and cool at least 2 hours.


So, except for using a different pie dough style, and using blackberries, I followed the recipe pretty closely. Note that because of the sugarlessness, apple quality is important here: better apples will make a better pie.

All was well as I filled the pie with a layer of blackberries, then tons of apples, then a lovely top, which I molded into pretty crenellations (not, unfortunately, until after I took the photo below, but use your imagination).



Sadly, once inside the oven, the edges began to melt and get shapeless. It wound up being an acceptable level of meltage though; the end result was still fairly pretty. You can actually see dough dripping in this photo:

Anyone who knows how to prevent this meltage from happening, please share your techniques.

Once out of the oven (this uses lower heat, and longer time, than most pie recipes... Ken H says it's okay to start hotter, then turn it down, but I thought this worked nicely), the egg-white-washed top crust looked lovely. When cut open, it collapsed a little: the top was crisp, but the apples had sunk while baking, so there was a bit of an apple cave, ready for fork spelunking, as a result.

The crust combo here is among the best-tasting (maybe the best-tasting) that I've made yet in my pie-a-week rampage (now up to 25 pies since the beginning of August!), though I'm not really sure why it turned out so good. The half-shortening top is fluffy-crispy; the all-butter bottom is dense-flaky. Both have been letdowns in the past but both were completely delicious this time. I don't know why but I'm pleased. Deliciousness is always welcome.

The quest for pie perfection continues.

(Actually, it's more a quest to just eat a lot of pie. But don't tell anyone. Perfection! Who needs perfection? Let's eat some pie.)