Helpful Hints

victoria@goinglocal-info.com told Penelope, “I need some help with tips for using frozen summer fruits in pie fillings. Most of the recipes I see use fresh fruit but as a gardener with an orchard I have lots of frozen berries, peaches, rhubarb, and other fruits. My friends are split as to how to freeze the fruit for pies (sugar vs no sugar and Fruit Fresh vs no Fruit Fresh) and how to use them in the pies (thaw vs using them frozen). I have tried every method I know of and still get soggy bottom crusts and too much juice in the filling when I use the frozen or thawed fruit. What’s the secret to freezing the fruit and then using it in a pie so that my pie does not end up with a soggy crust?”  

Penelope looks at the issue of freezing fresh fruit the same way the Prince looked at Sleeping Beauty when he finally found her in the room at the top of the castle — meaning, whatever was in the potion that put her to sleep would influence what she’d be like when she woke up. So the fewer ingredients there are in the mix when your fruit closes its eyes for the winter, the fewer variables there will be when it returns to its natural state. If your fruit is naked, it will sleep with greater abandon, you’ll do less adjusting for sweetness in the recipe, and the consistency will be more like the berry you knew and loved, and wanted to spend the life of your pie with. So nyet on the sugar or fresheners.

To thaw or not to thaw? Yes, definitely thaw out the fruit. It’s rude not to. Frozen fruit will make your pie runny, and anyway, would you like to wake up and find yourself in the oven? or would you rather be brought slowly and gently to room temperature, properly drained, patted dry, and then added like your old self to a recipe, in which the sugar doesn’t have to be adjusted for some sucrose interloper you’d been gooped-up with for months?

As for soggy bottom prevention: well-drained fruit is the big thing. Then, keep the fruit and the dry, thickening ingredients separate until you’re just about to pile the fruit mixture into the pie crust. Combining the ingredients for the fruit mixture at the very last minute keeps the juices from settling, so the crust gets to set as much as possible as it bakes. In fact, do the same when you’re using fresh fruit.

Romantic note:

The strawberry is actually a member of the Rose family. So if you should meet a man cultivated enough to give you a basket of beautiful strawberries instead of a dozen roses, don’t be insulted. Get dressed up.

Raleigh Meyers from Austin, TX doesn’t have the greatest oven. “It must have all these hot and cold spots,” she tells Penelope, “because no matter how many times I turn the pie during baking, the crust always starts to burn. What can I do?”

It’s arts and crafts time, Raleigh. We’re going to make a foil ring for the rim of the pie. All you need are aluminum foil and scissors. (Only not nail scissors.) Take a sheet of foil about the size of a standard cookie sheet or half sheet, fold it in half and cut out a half moon. Then open the foil and you’ll have a ring that fits around the rim of the pie. And this may seem obvious, but make the ring before you put the pie in the oven so you’re not trying to adjust the size when the pie and the oven are hot. And always wear oven mitts. It’s so easy to think, “I’ll just reach in the oven and place this little foil ring on the pie. It’s no big deal. I won’t burn my hands.” But you will burn your hands and it will be a big deal.

Mari-Lee Scott from Phonenix writes, “Sorry to bother you with this, Penelope, but I can never seem to crack an egg cleanly into a bowl.”

M-L, this isn’t a small issue. If bakers everywhere weren’t sick of sliding shell specks out of their egg mixtures there wouldn’t be so many different solutions out there. One is to crack the egg on the counter and then open it into the bowl. But that causes a lot of cracks, each of which is a potential shell pest. Another is to crack the egg on the side of the bowl. But again, there’s the potential for shell bits slipping down into the general yolk population.The best method I’ve heard about is to hold the egg in one hand, crack it cleanly with the blade of knife, open the shell and slide the contents down the side of the bowl. Also, finessing the slide is very important. Although after a dozen attempts at cracking, opening and sliding you realize that, like children, pets and dinner dates, every egg behaves differently.