Gingered Pear Pie is made with spiced pears, candied ginger and a lattice top crust.
Gingered Pear Pie
By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime
I have been so looking forward to sharing this pie recipe with you. You see, I started up a new blogger’s group which is called #BakingBloggers. I had been thinking about it for a long time, and when Cynthia Landrie of Feeding Big went on blogging hiatus, leaving #FilltheCookieJar without Queen and Country, it seemed to be the right time.
But for #BakingBloggers, I wanted to expand the possibilities well beyond the cookie jar. I have found myself longing for other baked goods, like pie. And layer cakes. And scones. And more cookies. I thought this would give me more time and opportunity, as well as my blogging friends, to get those things done.
One of the funny parts of being a blogger is being able to time all these things so they work into the home schedule. Unlike Martha Stewart, we don’t retain staff. We eat what we make, or share it with others. I have had several sweet recipes come up lately, which set my schedule back. I don’t eat many sweets myself. So I had pears, but then some pears were getting too ripe for pie. I have more pears, got behind, and those went onto a pear salad (which is coming tomorrow). And third time is a charm, right? Pears for pie. Except that was last night. And wouldn’t you just know it?
As soon as the pie was put together, I realize the oven is not getting hot. My baking element had malfunctioned. I guess I should be happy this was not happening next week (I usually get household breakdowns right on major holidays…)(Grr…)
I spent about an hour so peeved, not really knowing what to do with the pie (except freeze it). I haven’t ever ever ever baked a from scratch pie before from a frozen state. I mean those dinky pies in the freezer at the market just don’t compare. They are much thinner and are mostly filled with cornstarch and fruit goo. Just try to find more than a chunk or two of pear in those pies. I dare ya’.
I hadn’t realized at the time that I had a Rival/Nesco turkey roaster in the basement storage. It doesn’t really come to mind that easily- I only used it once, and that was about five years ago. But you know. I know I really should have ditched it but these kind of things hang around like skeletons in the kitchen pantry for times just like these.
So I started that today, and plopped my pie in there. Everything went swimmingly. Now I will tell you that I had planned to bake my pie with the glass pie plate sitting right on top of my baking stone on the lower 2/3’s rack (not the very bottom one) in the oven, which gives me a gorgeous bottom crust. So I didn’t par bake it before filling.
And going from frozen to turkey roaster and sitting on the rack in the roaster, it got nicely browned and the pears were done, but you go ahead and par bake yours 15 minutes at 350 and let it cool before you fill the bottom crust. That is, if you plan to do this ahead and freeze it. And to be true, there is something to be said for getting your pie put together ahead.
I also baked this at a slightly lower temperature than I would have in my regular oven, so there was maybe 1/2 cup liquid in the pie after it cooled down. Some people like a juicy pie, but I do not. But tell you what, I just tilted it and got rid of that juice. Whether you end up with juice or not, that’s what you can do to fix it. And it was definitely not so juicy as to be a train wreck. I mean, I’ve baked pie recipes before that were regular bowls of soup. This was not the case here.
And since I am giving the directions for what I actually did, if you are going to use your oven, go on and bake it for about 75 minutes at 350°F. As I said, I did a lower temperature since it was frozen to give it more chance to thaw- which was 90 minutes at 325°F. And if you tent your crust, you can probably squeak out a little longer. But remember that with a turkey roaster, if you lift that lid, all the heat will be instantly gone, so beware and leave it be.
Today I also made my Garlic Pull-Apart Bread in the turkey roaster, which will be up tomorrow for #BreadBakers. And in the interest of preparing for disasters like an oven going out, or not having enough ovens, I will do my Cranberry Bundt Cake (Thursday) in the turkey roaster as well. I mean, I may or may not have the oven fixed by then (Depends if they have the part) so I might as well go ahead planning with the roaster.
Check back with me all this week! I have tons of recipes going up.
~Sue
Gingered pear Pie
Pie Crust Ingredients:
- 11 ounces all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 4 tablespoons vegetable shortening
- 3 ounces ice cold water
- 2 teaspoons vinegar
Pie Crust Method:
- Cut butter and shortening into cubes and freeze until hard.
- Sift together the flour, sugar and salt and place in a food processor.
- Add butter and shortening cubes to the food processor and pulse until butter chops smaller but not incorporated.
- Add the cold water and vinegar and pulse a few times until crumbly, but don’t pulse it so far that it becomes a ball.
- Divide the dough into two disks,wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about an hour (or more).
- Roll dough out between parchment (one disk at a time, leave the other one refrigerated) to between 1/6-1/4-inches thick (big enough to fit the pie plate), patching to form a circle, but trying not to over-handle it.
- Transfer bottom crust to pan, proceed with par-baking and making pie filling before rolling out the last disk.
- Cut last disk of dough, rolled out into strips, and weave a latticed top for pie.
Pie Filling Ingredients:
- 3 pounds ripe but firm D’Anjou pears, peeled, cored and sliced
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 tablespoons chopped candied ginger
- 1 egg white, lightly beaten
- 2 tablespoons coarse sparkling sugars
Pie Baking Method (with Electric Turkey Roaster in lieu of oven):
- Gently toss pear slices with lemon juice to inhibit browning.
- Sprinkle pears with flour, sugar, cardamom, ground cloves and toss again.
- Fill pie plate with half the pie crust, flute edges, and blind bake at 350°F. for 15 minutes and let cool.
- Place filling in the pie plate.
- Roll out the other half of the crust and weave latticed strips of dough over pie, tucking the ends down into the filling (rather than trying to piece them to the bottom crust).
- Brush top crust lightly with beaten egg white and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
- Cover pie with plastic wrap and freeze until needed.
- Bake frozen pie in the turkey roaster on the metal rack at 325°F. for 90-100 minutes.
- Allow pie to cool completely before slicing and serving.
- Drain off any excess liquid, if there is any.
From the kitchen of palatablepastime.com
#BakingBloggers
Holiday Pies
- Applesauce Pie by Making Miracles
- Blackberry Pie by Karen’s Kitchen Stories
- Concord Grape Pie by A Day in the Life on the Farm
- Cranberry Apple Pie by House of Nash Eats
- Dairy-free Raspberry Jam Crostata by Manu’s Menu
- French Silk Pie by Tramplingrose: Cooking, Baking & Ranting in Small-Town South Dakota
- Pear-Apple Crumble Pie by Cookaholic Wife
- Pear Frangipane Tart with Cranberries by Caroline’s Cooking /
- Seafood B’stilla (Moroccan Seafood Pie) by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
- Stuffed Plum Tomato Tart by Food Lust People Love
- Gingered Pear Pie by Palatable Pastime
That is so cool! And your pie is gorgeous! I bet you’ll be keeping that turkey roaster around now!
Yes, I have also made bread in it to post for tomorrow and will be baking a Bundt, so it will certainly be getting a workout!
Where there’s a will…….
Late but not lost…
What if we don’t want to bake in a roaster? I would normally follow the same directions fur 325 is WAY low for a pie. Often pies are baked at 375 at the lowest, at least starting out at 400 sometimes. How should this be baked using a normal oven? Thanks
Reason being that is the temp to start for a frozen pie. There is a story behind why that happened that way which you can read in the post (my oven went out on me). And since that is what happened, that became the directions (because I would never show you a picture of food without telling you exactly how I got those results) but I do mention the normal way I would bake it in the post, which is 75 mins at 350F. If you don’t blind bake the crust, use the lower third of the oven and give it a bit longer, but shielding the crust. That way the underside crust gets browned. I don’t find I need 375 because I’d rather a touch lower temp and give it longer as the bottom crust always comes out better with a longer time. Higher heat tends to just over-brown the top, in my experience.