Plum, Hazelnut & Blue Cheese Pie

This was a good idea in theory: a plum & hazelnut pie, made savory through the addition of blue cheese. But I made some terrible errors in judgment. As a result, I believe we ate a total of four slices, and the second two were pretty reluctant. Not a success.

The dough was pretty good: I used the second half of my last batch, using the Four & Twenty Blackbirds recipe first posted way back when.

The dough, ready to roll:

Pressed out by hand:

Rolled:

Panned:

Shaped:

Crimped:

Now, my filling recipe here is basically identical to the one I used before. That time, my plums were chopped. This time the plums I defrosted were large halves, firmer and fresher and brighter tasting. The difference in texture and flavor wound up being less suitable for the pruny taste combination I was seeking, which was unfortunate, because it would have been better for the previous pie.

Plums, in the first stage of being mixed with coconut sugar, lemon juice and cornstarch:

The cornstarch mixture:

Everybody who hasn't already done so, please go buy some hazelnuts and toast them. Then roll them in a towel vigorously until the skins fall off somewhat. Then salt, pepper and oil them (and/or sweeten them). Then eat. Hazelnuts are the most delicious snack ever.

Hazelnuts, toasted and skinned.

The plum mixture in the pie shell. I didn't pre-bake this time, and I don't know why on earth not. I usually do, and this time, with frozen fruit, seems in retrospect like an obvious candidate for prebaking. It could have been so much better if I had. But, look how pretty:

My hazelnut crumb topping (recipe also detailed in the previous post), before adding butter. Note that the recipe calls for adding a little milk at the end. As far as I can tell that was the disaster point. Before that the crumb topping was delicious: dry, crumbly, buttery and nutty. After that it turned to a wet peanut butter texture, and never dried back out. Here it is, in the glory days of its youth:

The plum filling, partially baked, about halfway through. Look how much juice has emerged! It stayed there, making this pie extremely wet. I actually tilted the pan over a bowl and poured out about a cup and a half of juice, but what remained was still wetter than I wanted.

After draining, I added crumbled blue cheese from a local Portland dairy farm:

Then did my best to smear on the (visibly over-wet) crumb topping.

So, what went wrong?

1. The hazelnut crumb topping was too wet. If I did it again, I'd skip the milk. I did use a dry sweetener this time, but it was still too moist. It was actually hard to taste the delicious hazelnutty crunch. In fact, I'm not sure I should be doing a crumb topping on this pie at all; maybe it'd be better with a lattice or solid top.
2. The crust was soggy and wet throughout the center. I should've pre-baked it thoroughly. Also:
3. The plums were too firm and also too juicy- I should have lightly cooked them in a saucepan ahead of time. This would have softened the texture and also allowed me to drain the juices ahead of time, instead of letting them saturate the crust.

What went right?

1. The actual plum flavor was excellent.
2. The blue cheese combination was pretty good, though I feel like a different cheese might have been better. (No idea which. Any suggestions, cheese enthusiasts?)
3. The crust should have been excellent- I think I prepped it very well and was excited by the texture of the edges.

Suzanne suggested that I should keep working on this until I master it, and then it will have been my own invention. But I think instead I'll try to make some pies that taste good, and maybe revisit this idea sometime in the future when I'm feeling more confident.