Blackberry Pie

Happy New Year!  First pie of the year?  A totally inappropriate summer fruit pie.  Uh, huh.  I do what I want, lovely people.

I live in the Midwest and it's about 10 degrees out, so needless to say, I do not have fresh blackberries.  I do, however, have Oregon canned fruit, the best canned fruit in light syrup I have ever found, and which most closely resembles real fruit directly off the branch.  Hmm.  As I type this, I think, I could have used a frozen bag of blackberries.  Oh well. C'est la vie.

I mainly followed the recipe on the inside label of the can below.

Use the reserve juice of 1 can of fruit...it's not much as you can see in the level of the pan.  Add sugar and lemon juice.

Here's my first difference.  I used King Arthur Flour's "Instant Clearjel" instead of cornstarch.  It's the first time I've used it.

This stuff thickened up my juice mixture, but to me it seemed too thick.  Perhaps you need less of the clearjel than you would cornstarch.  See, this is where you just have to experiment as a baker.  Sometimes you can't follow the directions exactly.  Use your eyes, smell doneness with your nose.  Seriously, you get to that point.

I love this whisk.  It's a gravy whisk, and to me it is so much better than a balloon whisk when you're trying to prevent clumps when whisking in a thickener.

The main ingredient.

One of my favorite butters, Kerrygold.  I tried to remove the price tag, but no go.  I also love Plugra, but I didn't have it on hand.  Any super-fatted European butter is the way to go.

Anyway, my second variance of the directions was that I added several tablespoons of butter to my getl mixture to make it smoother.  Than I felt I needed to add the juice from the second can of fruit as well.  That Clearjel is powerful. (-;  Anyway, finally I was happy with the consistency.

Below I dotted the pie with more butter that will eventually give it a luxuriously silky texture.

It's finally to vary up your crust edging.  Here I used the front of a spoon.  

I topped this pie with heavy whipping cream and Demerara Turbinado sugar.

Almost ready for the oven.

Make a few slits for steam to escape.

One more shot in different light.  Sometimes these pies look better before they're baked.

All done!  Yum!  Like a slice of summertime in the midst of winter.