Pie #1: Sweet and Sour, but Mostly Sour (Red Currant Almond Pie)

One goal I have for my Year of Pie is to use seasonal ingredients when possible.  Thus, when my friends Jeff and Angela offered some of their red currants I was super excited to make a red currant pie!  I had never eaten currants before, let alone in pie...but I was sure it could be done!  Just look at these red jewels - they hold great promise for a beautiful color, if not a tasty pie!

Piecing together an Almond Red Currant and a Sour Cherry pie recipe, we have Pie #1:

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Red Currant Almond Pie

Ingredients:

1 unbaked pie crust (9.5 in)

filling:

2/3 cup (heaping) toasted silvered almonds (Bake at 350F for 5ish minutes.)

3 2/3 cup stemmed and cleaned red currants

1 2/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

crumb topping:

2/3 cup oats

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup sugar

sprinkling of ground cinnamon

several shakes of salt

3/8 cup slivered/chopped almonds (no need to be toasted)

4 Tablespoons butter, melted and cooled a bit

Pie Algorithm:

1. Place toasted almonds in bottom of unbaked crust.

2. Gently fold together the remaining filling ingredients until mixed well.  Place in crust.

3. Mix together topping (will be crumbly when finished).  Spread over filling.

4. Bake at 425F for 15 minutes, then turn down oven to 350F baking for 30-40 more minutes, or until filling is bubbly and starting to thicken.

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Being Pie #1, of course there is room for improvement.  The recipes I post will be my 'improved' version - they will show how I would make the pie in the future, and may not be the exact steps I took to create the pie of the week.

First lesson learned: don't over-fill the pie.  If the recipe is written for a 10-inch pie dish, don't try to fit all the ingredients into a 9.5-inch dish.  (Simplifying to a cylinder with these diameters, you would be working with only about 90% of the volume.)  This causes one large mess in your oven, and a sticky crust and pie dish.  On a positive note, the crust is a pretty shade of red!

Second lesson of the week: make sure the pie has baked long enough.  This poor pie needed a few more minutes in the oven for the filling to thicken.  Unfortunately because of the over-filling issue it got pulled out too early.  Perhaps the pie will be more beautiful next week!

For those of you who like tangy - this pie is a great choice!  It's slightly sweet, but as the name suggests 'Mostly Sour'.  For those who don't like tangy - the sour is easily overcome with enough vanilla ice cream!  If I was lucky enough to obtain currants again, I would be very happy to eat more of this pie!