Summer Berry Flag Day Pie....

I have not been here much of late. I have a full house which I love. My husband is working from home and my college boy did not find a summer job until yesterday. So I have been making breakfast and lunches and constantly running to the market for more food...two teen aged boys are eating me out of house and home. We have had some lovely meals but no time to photograph them and share them here.My younger son is still in school, finals are this week and thankfully Friday is the last day of school and summer officially starts.

Last week was Flag Day and also my husband's birthday. I found myself with a lot of blueberries and blackberries and they had to be used so I made a pie. I used my usual crust...Martha Stewart's Pate Brisee. Always wonderful and flaky. The filling was also from Martha Stewart...very simple. It was a glorious pie.

The  filling was simple....for a 9 inch double crust pie.
You can use your favorite pie crust recipe....I love Martha's Pate Brisee

Pate Brisee
adapted from Martha Stewart

The pie dough may be made one day ahead and refrigerated, well wrapped in plastic, or frozen up to one month.

Ingredients

* 2 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour
* 1 Teaspoon coarse salt
* 1 Teaspoon sugar
* 1 Cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter cut into pieces( or 1/4 cup cold shortening to replace 1/4 cup of the butter)
* 1/4 to 1/2 Cup ice water
Directions

1. Place the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor, and process for a few seconds to combine. Add the butter pieces to the flour mixture, and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, about 10 seconds. Add the ice water in a slow, steady stream, pouring it through the feed tube with the machine running, just until the dough holds together. Do not process for more than 30 seconds.
2. Turn the dough out onto a work surface. Divide into 2 equal pieces, and place on 2 separate sheets of plastic wrap. Flatten, and form 2 disks. Wrap, and refrigerate at least 1 hour before using.

Summer Berry Pie
adapted( barely) from the July issue of Martha Stewart Living

You need a nine inch pie plate...roll the crust out to about an 1/8 inch thickness on a lightly floured surface.
Press the dough into the bottom and up the sides of a 9 inch pie plate. I prefer using a glass pyrex pie plate.
Trim the excess dough flush with the edges of the plate or crimp the edges.
Combine 6 cups berries. I used 4 cups of blueberries and 2 cups of blackberries, 3/4 cup sugar, 3 Tablespoons Cornstarch, 2 Tablespoons Lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. Fill bottom crust with the berries and then roll out the top crust. I cut some strips with a pastry wheel and placed them onto the pie and then I cut out some stars with two star cutters, one small and one larger and just placed them here and there. I used an egg wash to "glue" them onto the pie and gave the entire pie a nice brushing with the egg wash( one egg and a tablespoon or so of cream) and a sprinkle of sanding sugar. I baked the pie on a half sheet pan covered with a piece of baking parchment to catch any drips.
Pre heat oven to375* and bake for one hour and 20 minutes. Tent with foil after one hour if the crust is getting too brown.
The recipe in the magazine states to freeze the pie for a hour before baking. I did not have time to do that and my freezer was quite full so I did not do that step. The pie was just fine. I will freeze the pie next time and see if there is much difference. The original recipe is for 6, 5 inch mini pies...I think I will bake those for the 4th of July.

We ate it warm...hardly letting it have enough time to cool and had a slice with vanilla ice cream. It did not look as pretty on the plate as if we had let it cool longer, but no one wanted to wait. The berries were sweet and delicious and the crust was buttery and so flaky.

In the end it was a mess of purple berries and melted ice creamy deliciousness....

It was a nice day....how lovely is it to have too many berries? A problem I wish I were faced with everyday.
This pie held up well at room temperature for several days. The berry filling firmed up and the pie was easier to slice neatly.

I baked this pie the night before my darling husband's birthday. So on the actual day, of course he had a cake.

 A yellow cake with milk chocolate ganache frosting, the recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's newest book
"Heavenly Cakes". I used some Callebaut Milk chocolate that my husband recently brought me back from Belgium. But that is a story for another day.