Recipe: Easy Berry Pie

Yeahhh...Doesn't quite look like the picture on the website.

I got stood up over the weekend, so I had most of Saturday all to myself (not that I minded!). To keep myself occupied, after going to the gym, running errands, and making lunch, I thought I'd bake a pie. Safeway had a sale on blueberries and strawberries, and I already had a pre-made graham cracker crust, so I was pretty much set.

I googled "easy berry pie," and the first hit was this recipe from Parade with the same name. Voilà!

Ingredients

• 2 cup graham-cracker crumbs
• 1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter, melted
• 4½ cup fresh berries, washed, hulled if necessary, and drained
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¼ cup cornstarch
• ½ cup water
• 2 Tbsp lime juice, or more as needed

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In a 9-inch pie pan, combine graham cracker crumbs and melted butter. Press into bottom and sides of pie pan. Bake for 10 minutes.
3. In a food processor or using a fork, mash 2 cups berries. Mix sugar, cornstarch, and water in a saucepan; whisk until smooth. Stir in mashed fruit. Cook over medium-low heat until mixture is thick, about 7–10 minutes. Add lime juice. Taste and add extra juice or sugar as needed.
4. Stir in remaining berries. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or until partially thickened. Spoon into crust. Chill for at least 3 hours to set. Serve with ice cream or sweetened whipped cream, if desired. Store the pie, tightly covered, in the refrigerator.

Since I already had the crust pre-made, I didn't have to worry about the first two ingredients or the first two steps of directions. I did use my food processor (for the first time!), which worked like a charm. However, I do wonder if I chopped up the berries too much, to the point that they were too liquid-y. This pie needed to be in the fridge for nearly 24 hours to even be close to set, and you can see from the photo that there was so much liquid that it ran over the crust (and that's not even all of the filling I made! I ended up just eating some of it because I knew it wouldn't fit.). More corn starch definitely would have helped. And because of all the liquid, the crust was completely soaked and mushy, instead of a nice, crunchy contrast to the filling.

I'm certainly not blaming the recipe for the way this pie turned out. And it's not all bad: heated up with some vanilla ice cream on top, it tastes okay. But, not my finest baking moment.