The winter cranberry fest continues! As I told you the other day, I’ve been answering the call of the cranberries that have been singing to me from my freezer. And what cheerier fruit is there to work with on a bitter snowy night (like the one we’re having in D.C. right now) than those bright red little globes? Listening to some good rootsy American music and staring at a bowlful of cranberries, I put together another cranberry chorus that I hope you’ll like. I have to say: I loooove it. It’s got a deep-jammy-berry thing goin’ on that just rocks.
Unlike the cranberry-apple and all-cranberry crisps I blogged about a few days ago, this one is a real pie. Although you could use this filling for a crisp or cobbler, too, of course. Since it’s Pie of the Month Club time here in the CurvyMama kitchen, I put my little mixture into pie form.
This pie is really easy, and offers the tart and intensely colorful delights of a cherry or rhubarb pie, with the added interest of dried apricots and figs, which pick up the juices during baking and get all soft-and-chewy-delicious, and a sprinkling of crunchy pecans.
So here’s how it goes: you throw all your ingredients–except the orange juice–into a big bowl and mix them to combine. You’ll notice that the dry ingredients just sort of fall to the bottom; you don’t get a nice cohesive mixture because the fruits are pretty dry. That’s where the orange juice comes in!
Drizzle the orange juice over the fruit mixture and mix until you get an evenly sandy sort of texture. Not wet enough to make a puddle at the bottom of the bowl, just enough to make the dry ingredients cling to the fruit. This is how it should look:
Roll out your bottom crust, pour the filling into the crust, put on the top crust, trim and crimp. Put your pie in the fridge while the oven is heating to 425, and the rest is history (see recipe below for less flippant directions).
Cranberry Fig Apricot Pie
Ingredients
- Pie dough for a double-crust 9-inch pie
- 1 12-ounce package fresh cranberries
- 8 dried Turkish figs stems cut off, quartered
- 8 dried apricots quartered
- 1/4 c. port wine
- 1 1/4 c. sugar
- 1 tsp. orange zest
- 3 Tbsp. tapioca flour
- 1/2 tsp. almond extract
- 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
- Dash of salt
Instructions
- Roughly chop about 1/2 cup of the cranberries. Put the rest into a big bowl.
- Put the chopped cranberries and cut-up figs and apricots into a small saucepan and stir in the port. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes, until most of the port has been absorbed by the fruit. Set aside to cool.
- To the big bowl with the whole cranberries, add the rest of the ingredients. Stir until combined.
- When the fig-apricot mixture has cooled somewhat, add it to the whole-cranberry mixture and stir to combine.
- Roll out your bottom disk of dough. Ease it into the pie pan. Trim edges.
- Fill the bottom crust with the fruit filling.
- Roll out the top disk of dough and lay it on top, trimming, rolling and crimping the edges.
- Put the pie in the freezer to chill while the oven preheats.
- Preheat the oven to 425. When it is fully up to temperature, take the pie out of the oven. Make a few decorative vents in the top-center of the pie. Brush lightly with egg white and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake at 425 for about 15 minutes.
- Turn the oven down to 375. Bake for another 45 minutes or so, checking to see that the top crust is a nice deep golden color and that the juices are bubbling through the vents.
- Cool to room temperature before serving.
Are you kidding me with this pie? As I’m sitting here licking the photos, I’m thinking I’d weigh 300 pounds if we lived near one another.
Keep bringing our taste buds to new and glorious heights, CurvyMama!
Happy to aspire to that, my dear bestest BF. xoxo