Raspberry and peach has to be one of my favorite fruit combinations, and given that fruit desserts are my personal favorites, I was really excited about this week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick. Rebecca of Beurrista decided on Melissa's North Fork Peach Raspberry Pie, doesn't that just sound so summery and delicious? You can find the recipe for the pie here if you do not have The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. I made a few alternations mention below...
The filling of this pie is thickened with tapioca flour, which the directions say to get by grinding tapioca pearls in a spice grinder. Tapioca is not something I usually have on hand, but I did have this bag of jumbo tapioca pearls that I ordered online in order to make bubble tea. I bought this bag a while ago and have not yet made said bubble tea, and almost forgot I had it in the pantry until this pie recipe came along and reminded me! Will have to make bubble tea soon :)
After grinding up some tapioca flour, making the pie crust (I used my favorite butter pie crust recipe that is made in the food processor), and rolling the pie crust in a perfect circle, I could not find a pie plate! I used to have 3 or 4 glass pie plates, earlier this year one got ruined as I tried to make dulce de leche in the oven, one pie plate is at my mom's house ever since I brought over the SMS Coconut Custard Pie there on Memorial Day, and I have absolutely no idea where the others are. I searched high and low and finally decided to go with my new 12 by 12 square tart pan. It is huge and the deepest tart pan I have. Still, a tart pan is not a pie pan, and holds a lot less filling, so I decreased the peaches down to three cups, and kept the raspberries at two cups. I also decreased the sugar to 1/2 cup.
Since this tart pan is so big there was no way I was going to have enough pie dough for a double crust, so I reshaped my crust to fit the bottom square and up the sides, then peeked into one of my cookie cutter drawers and took out the star and cut some shapes for the top crust.
Not too bad, kind of shabby chic, right? Maybe?
Rustic? Yeah, that works. It ended up being delicious and setting up perfectly. I loved this pie and would love to make it again as written with the extra peaches and a full upper crust. My kids love the fruit and the stars, only my youngest would bother eating the bottom crust. I could not convince picky husband to give this one a try. He saw the tapioca out and reminded me how much he hates tapioca, even though I assured him it was ground down to powder and there would be no tapioca balls in the pie. He also is not a big fan of peaches. Sorry, honey. The kids and I loved it and it was a fun summer dessert, thanks for a great SMS pick Rebecca!