Before starting this post, I recommend you get your 4th’o’July spirit in gear with this music.  Feel free to listen while you read.

Now that we have that established, let’s talk PIE!

You probably know by now that I live in Georgia, so you may be thinking, “Mary!  What in the world possessed you to think that, in 100-degree-plus heat, baking a pie would be a good idea??”  If you’re thinking that, then you definitely have a reasonable mind.

And my response would be, “I don’t know.”

For some reason my stubborn brain was certain that despite the 100 degree heat, I had the capacity to keep butter cool enough to make reasonable pie crust.  But before I start berating myself for over-confidence, let’s take a look at the final product.

Pie!

Not bad, right?

But back to my over-compensating!

Since I was a kid I typically spend everything 3rd of July with my parents for local fireworks.  Since I can remember the city has provided a great free fireworks show every 3rd, and this year I volunteered to bring dessert while we waited for the sun to go down.

I went with pie really for no other reason than I wanted to continue practicing my pie skills.  I’ve made a few other pies over the last couple months and while they were all tasty, have found my crust skills a bit lacking.  So more pie had to be made!

To keep the dessert light and fruity I decided to go with a red white and blue theme – strawberries and blueberries to be exact.

Fruit!

Mixed up with a bit of sugar and nutmeg it made for a deliciously easy filling; a few hours of sitting in their own juices is about as easy as it gets!

The crust…well, that was a different story.

I’ve had the Flour cookbook for probably around a year now but haven’t used one recipe out of it yet.  So to the pie crust!  There were 3 options and I chose one that I saw the book use in other sweet-pie recipes, “Pate Brisee I”.  And I thought that if I used the butter straight from the fridge, it would still act appropriately for the crust.

Unfortunately that didn’t work out…instead of the flour and butter staying dry and just clumping up, the butter immediately softened and basically turned the dough right into batter.  Womp womp!

Regardless I went ahead with the crust (what else was I supposed to do, start over?  Pshhhh!) and as you can tell from the pictures, it didn’t turn out half bad!

Inverse Pie Slice

In the end the pie actually turned out  deliciously.  Without chocolate I find this very surprising, but it was sweet, fruity, and awesome.  Especially with whipped cream on top (required for red white and blue, of course).

Looking for an awesome dessert and not in ridiculous heat?  Definitely make this pie!  I promise everyone will love it.

Have an excellent 4th of July, everyone!  And even if you’re not from the United States, enjoy the freedom you hopefully have!

Pie on Bricks!

Freedom Pie Filling

Makes 1 9″ pie.  I’m only supplying the filling recipe here.  Use your favorite pie crust recipe or just buy one from the grocery store!

Ingredients:

• 1 pint strawberries
• 1 pint blueberries
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp nutmeg

Mary Gezo

Formerly of both n00bcakes and !Blog, the two magically become one on Spatialdrift; expect some lazy baking and serious nerditude. Also, I love semicolons.