Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie

Four layers of heavenly goodness: buttery pastry crust, filled with a layer of chocolate, topped with four kinds of berries, and finished off with crumb topping.  The Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie I made for Week 14 was sensational.  The recipe comes from Dani Cone’s Cutie Pies cookbook. 

For the crust I opted to stick with the All-Butter Crust recipe used in the Cutie Pies cookbook.  It is a tasty crust, but seems to lack stability when I fold and crimp the edges.  It may be stable before I place it in the oven, but by the end of baking one side has inevitably slumped into the pie pan or flopped over the edge of the pie pan.  As I work through this crust recipe in the future, I will have to see if I can tweak the recipe a bit to make the edge of the crust more durable.   

The filling was put together very quickly, scattering chocolate chips on the bottom of the crust topping with a layer of sweetened and spiced berries.  The pie could be left open or finished with a crumb topping, but who can resist a crumb topping?  “Not I,” said the avid pie-baker. 

   

The chocolatey base

Four kinds of berries

Sweetening up the deal

Feeling crumby, anyone?

Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie oven-ready!

Our Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie was the finale to an already grand meal with our friend Eric.  It is hard to believe that so many good things could come together so perfectly for a small dinner party, but this was one meal that hit the spot from the first bite into our French dip sandwiches to our last taste of pie licked off our forks.  Perfection.   

At the top of my list of favorites...

I am often asked if I have a top list of pies from my year-long adventure.  Usually my response is indefinite with a pie or two listed between a lot of hemming and hawing because, let’s be honest here, I have made a lot of very tasty pies so far.  However, if I were asked today, Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie is most certainly at the top of that list.  Enough said?