Perfect Pie Crust

Sometimes you get lucky. Like I did the day Veronica and several other wonderful women decided to induct me into their foodie friend group on MySpace, long before any of us had blogs. Or in my case, before I knew what a blog was. I didn’t realize it then, but quickly learned I was part of a friend group for life. One with strong bonds and big loyalties. A sisterhood.

Our bond is and always has been food. We encourage, celebrate and admire qualities in each other we often wish we had in ourselves. For me, I’ve always admired Veronica’s ability to make pie dough. She’s been my inspiration for years on the subject, and I thought, who better to come and share her secrets and knowledge?

Veronica writes the blog Recipe Rhapsody, a perfect name for a lady who loves to sing, entertain, cook and bake. I am fortunate to call her friend. Even if she does make fun of my store bought pie dough!

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Don’t give up too easily; persistence pays off in the end.



This proverb can be applied to many areas of life, and making piecrust is no exception. Perhaps you have already mastered the art of making pie crust, but many fear pie dough the same way I used to fear yeast breads. This fear is one that can be easily put to rest with some knowledge, understanding, and practice.

I’ve only been making pies a few years, but I make them pretty frequently and while I’m not an expert or professional by any means, I have become fairly comfortable working with pie dough and creating attractive pies.

What I’ve learned along the way:

~Temperature is important when making & working with pie dough. The key to a flaky crust is keeping every element of the dough as cold as possible. Cold fats are essential because they stay in small balls, separate from the flour, which creates pockets of fat that melt and create flakiness as the crust cooks. That is also why ice cold water is used—to keep the fat cold and separate from the flour.

~To prevent sticking and tearing while rolling the dough out, start with a heavily floured surface and flour the dough itself, reapplying as necessary.

~Beaten egg white can be used to create a barrier between the crust and filling, making it less prone to sogginess. Brush some on the crust before filling and baking, or brush it on a prebaked crust a few minutes after removing it from the oven. The residual heat will cook it and help seal it off from excess moisture from your cream filling.

~To create a golden shine, brush the top crust with beaten egg before baking.

~Steam vents are essential in two-crust pies. A small hole in the middle of your pie will do, or you can cut a design or slits, whatever you fancy. Provide a place for the steam to escape or it will create it’s own and it’s not going to be pretty.

~Extra pie dough can be used to fix tears or cracks, and to make fun things like homemade pop tarts or pie dough “cinnamon rolls.” My recipe uses mostly butter and I’ve made some pretty good shortbread with the leftover by adding powdered sugar to it!

As far as pie crust recipes are concerned, I’ve used all-shortening recipes, all-butter recipes, recipes with vinegar and without, recipes with sugar and without, and have come to favor a rich all-purpose pastry recipe that I now use most often. The fat to flour ratio in this recipe is very high, which makes a tender crust. The butter enhances the flavor while the shortening gives it the flakiness that we desire in a perfect pie crust.

So try this recipe and if you don’t succeed, try, try again. Over and over again. Once you get the hang of pie crust, you will be glad you didn’t give up! Homemade pie is very much worth the effort of a homemade crust. Despite Laura and Dishboy Scott’s reassurances to the contrary (sorry, guys!), in my humble opinion there is quite a difference between a pie made with store-bought crust and the real deal.

Just do it. Persistence pays off in the end. Amen.

Perfect Pie Crust
 Printable Recipe


Makes enough for two pies or one double-crust pie


2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter, cold and cut into 16 pieces

1/4 cup shortening, chilled in freezer

6-10 tablespoons ice-cold water (I use a scant 1/3 cup every time)
1 beaten egg, for brushing (optional)


Mix flour and salt. Cut the butter and shortening in with a pastry blender or food processor until pieces are the size of small peas. Add ice water and mix until it starts to form a ball. Divide dough in half, gather in your hands and gently shape each into a ball, flatten them into discs, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. If they get too hard, leave them on the counter until pliable enough to roll out.


When ready to make your pie, roll out one disk and fit into a pie plate, trimming off the excess. Fill, cover with the top crust, pinch and flute the edges. If desired, brush beaten egg over the top crust for a golden shine, then cut a few vents holes and bake according to your pie recipe directions. If you are making a one-crust pie, you can either halve the recipe or freeze the second disc, wrapped well with plastic wrap and placed in a Ziploc bag, for later use.


To prebake your crust for a cream pie, line the plate with your crust and flute the edges, then refrigerate until firm. Line crust with a square of parchment paper large enough to cover the entire inside. Fill with dried beans and bake at 350 for twenty minutes.

Remove the crust from the oven; pull the corners of parchment toward the middle and lift out. Poke the crust all over with a fork and return to the oven for ten minutes. As soon as you take it out of the oven, brush a beaten egg white over the bottom and sides to seal. The residual heat will cook the egg white and turn it opaque.

Allow the crust to cool before filling.

Pictures and video by Veronica from Recipe Rhapsody. Recipe from "The Dessert Lover's Cookbook" by Marlene Sorosky.

Good Pie Dough and a Run in with a Pie Judge

Dishboy Scott and I worked for days on our ridiculously challenged pie dough skills to be able to enter a real pie in the fair. Friendly competition and a bit of jealousy ensued on both our parts as one would get a bit better as the other struggled to catch up.

You see, although I make a lot of pies, I am a miserable failure at pie crust. My mom, now she makes it look easy. I just usually make it look messy and strange. This time though, I powered through recipe after recipe until I finally put together something that worked.

Yes, I am that "challenged". That being said, this must be a hard one to fail, because I’ve made it several times since and have yet to screw up. I finally have a good recipe.

Sadly, after all our hard work our pies almost were not entered at all. Dishboy Scott and I showed up to drop them off this evening and were quickly rejected. “NO GLASS!” barked a cranky looking judge. I raised my eyebrows and stated we had no idea, as the rules just came out today. I kept thinking, “Who the heck doesn’t bake with Pyrex?”

Anyway, I decided I could knock the old bat out cold and leave my pie behind with its wonderful crust as a memento. She complained of a bad back and I’m combat trained. So, this is the part where I tell you I kicked her teeth in right?

Well, no such thing happened. Instead we just stood at her table refusing to move until she accepted our pies. We might get last place, but at least we’re entered.

I guess I’ll have to learn to use a metal pie pan next year.

Good Pie Dough
Printer Version
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, cubed
10 ounces (by weight) unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 ounces cold full fat cream cheese, diced
2 tablespoons cold heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon white vinegar

Place butter in a sandwich bag. Freeze until solid; about 30 minutes. Place flour, baking powder and salt in a gallon size bag and freeze as well.

Pulse together flour mixture in a food processor. Add the cream cheese and pulse to combine, about 15 seconds. Add the frozen butter and pulse until very small crumbles form. Pulse in the heavy whipping cream and vinegar.

Divide dough crumbs in half adding a little more to one batch for bottom dough. Place into gallon size plastic bags. Label bags “bottom” and “top” if needed. Refrigerate crumbs 6 to 12 hours.

Remove the dough to the counter for 20 to 30 minutes or until the dough warms up enough to roll but is still cool. Open bags and press dough together through the outside of the plastic. Shape dough into a flat disc using the bag to help form the shape kneading a couple times as you form.

Place the dough between a lightly floured pie size piece of wax paper, lightly sprinkle dough with flour and top with another piece of wax paper. Roll 1/8” thick and 12” in diameter. *Roll dough forward only, rotating the dough an eighth a turn per couple of rolls* Near the end of rolling, gently peel off wax paper and lightly sprinkle dough with flour. Place wax paper back over the dough, flip dough over, peel off wax paper and lightly flour the bottom side to prevent sticking.

Note: If pie dough is too soft after rolling, slide a cookie sheet under the wax paper and freeze for 10 minutes.

Yield: 1 double crust for 9” pie.

Recipe & photographs by Laura Flowers

Copycat Hostess Blackberry Fruit Pie

I have a life long love affair with Oregon Fruit, and some of my most treasured memories involve their Red Tart Cherries and holiday baking with my mom. It feels like Mom’s been making great cherry pies every Thanksgiving and Christmas forever. Or at least in my personal version of forever. I remember as a child, every time she opened a can of Oregon Fruit cherries, she’d tell us how wonderful their fruit was and how great it made her pies. To this day I still believe her, and now I use every kind of Oregon Fruit I can get my hands on. This time it was a can of gorgeous blackberries.

When you check the ingredient label on Oregon Fruit Blackberries it will simply read, “blackberries, water and sugar”. You won’t find corn syrup, chemicals, or any other garbage. Just top quality fruit picked and canned when perfectly ripe. Why can’t more food processors do this? This is what processed food should be!

I created this copycat recipe because my husband adores those fruit-like Hostess Pies. I thought if I could make a hand pie with the same taste and mouth texture of his beloved chemical filled ones, I might be able to convince him homemade can blow the packaged version out of the water.

It took a bit of trial and error, but these treats are a lot like the Hostess version, only with much better tasting blackberry filling and a tender almost cookie like olive oil crust. They’re so good I’ve already made five batches this past week in the name of “testing”! Ok, so maybe I just wanted to make more tasty hand pies and share them with my family and friends.

These little copycats completely won Jesse over and I don't think he'll be buying the Hostess version for awhile. Hopefully they'll win you over too.

Blackberry Fruit Pie Filling
You can leave out the Crème de Cassis if you aren’t comfortable baking with liqueurs. Although, by the time it’s said and done, there’ll likely be less residual alcohol in each pie than in other baked goods with vanilla extract.

1 (15 ounce) can Oregon Fruit Blackberries in Light Syrup
2 tablespoons Crème de Cassis Liquor (really enhances the flavor)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
¼ cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1. Drain the blackberries and reserve the liquid.

2. In a medium sized saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and add flour and salt. Cook stirring constantly until the mixture is a light golden brown. Slowly add the reserved berry liquid stirring to combine. Add the Crème de Cassis and sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook until thick stirring frequently.

3. Add the black berries to the saucepan. Gently stir often until it comes to a simmer. Let simmer for about 2 minutes or until mixture looks like it is starting to be come thick again. Remove pan from heat and stir in almond extract.

4. Move mixture to a bowl and cool uncovered to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours until the mixture has gelled.

Olive Oil Pastry
You’ll need two batches of this dough to use up the fruit mixture. Don’t double up the batches though. The dough can get tough if you do. This simple dough takes just a minute to make, so it won’t take long to prepare two.

2 ¾ cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup extra light olive oil (Vegetable oil will work too, but don't use extra virgin olive oil.)
½ cup milk

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the oil and milk all at once and stir just until moist and starting to combine. (Don’t over mix; there will still be some crumbs.) Press half the dough into wax paper and fold to cover. Press the other half of the dough in another piece of wax paper.

Refrigerate dough for about 20 to 30 minutes. This pastry cooperates better with less time sitting around, so make it shortly before assembling the hand pies.

Copycat Hostess Pie Assembly
You’ll need:
1 egg
1 teaspoon water
Flour for dusting
3 inch biscuit cutter or other pie cutter, stamper, or crimper
Silicon pastry brush
1 (standard size 50) cookie scoop
Parchment paper
Cookie sheets

1. Make the glaze (below) and place in the refrigerator in a small covered bowl.

2. Flour a clean surface and roll out one section of pastry at a time like you would for pie, dusting the top with a little flour as needed.

3. Make an egg wash by beating the egg in a small bowl with 1 teaspoon water. Set aside. Line a couple cookie sheets with parchment paper, move the oven rack to the middle position and preheat to 375 degrees.

4. Cut the dough with a biscuit cutter as close as possible to each other. Move the rounds and roll out half the pieces about an inch large. Move the rounds to the cookie sheets. Patch any cracks by pressing them closed, or with small flat pieces of dough brushed with egg wash. Don’t worry about small cracks; the egg wash will seal them.

5. Scoop a small amount of filling onto the smaller dough pieces. Flip the large dough pieces over onto the top so the egg side is touching the filling. Press out the air and gently push the filling to the middle and seal the pastry well with your fingers. Cut again with the cutter for a pretty round shape and press the edges together with a fork.

6. Brush the tops with egg wash and bake for about 15 minutes until the edges just start to look golden brown. Don’t over bake. Move the pies to a cooling rack and set the timer for another 15 minutes. After time is up drizzle on some glaze and brush it over the pies. Cool completely.

7. Repeat with remaining dough tossing the scraps in the garbage can, as they don’t reroll well. Cooled pies can be places in sandwich bags and frozen to throw in lunch boxes or for quick treats that warm well in the microwave.

Makes about 15 or so hand pies.

Glaze
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons milk

Place the butter in a microwave safe bowl. Melt the butter in the microwave. Stir in the salt, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract. Then whisk in the milk with a fork until smooth.

Recipe and photograph by Laura Flowers.