Summer Berry

As Winter begins to fade and Spring takes hold every students' mind turns to one thought... Summer is coming.  For a High School student Summer means sleeping in, no projects or homework, and staying out late on the weekdays.  There is however more to Summer than this... there's the green grass, the warm sun, oh yeah... and the berries.  All in all, Summer is pretty awesome; and if Summer had a flavor it would taste like a Summer Berry Pie.

This was one pie that just sort of worked out for me.  There were no troubles with the crust... no problems with the filling... I suppose there was one slight hiccup at the end when I cut into the pie sooner than I should.  Even so, this pie behaved beautifully!  It also turned out to be the most beautiful pie I've made so far.  You see I've been thinking about really making my pies LOOK more delicious; (since everyone tells me they already to taste delicious) and so tonight I put that though into action.  However, before I can describe how the pie looked, I need to tell about how it was made.

This pie began, as all pies must, with a crust.  Flour, sugar, salt, butter, water... by now you should have the general idea of how this works.  You put all of those ingredients together and get:

Wait a minute... That looks HORRIBLE!!! Let's try using a spatula to incorporate that water shall we?  Okay, and now we have... this:

Hahaha, umm... still not quite what I was going for.  I can't exactly fit a filling into a ball of dough.  Hmm, okay then.  Rolling pin, a bit of flour, and TADA:

MUCH better.  Don't you agree?  Well with the crust all taken care of it's time for... (pause for dramatic affect)... the filling.

I absolutely adore berry fillings.  Berries are so sweet and delicious; and in pie fillings you add even more sugar and then you end up with something even more sweeter and more delicious...er.  Okay, proper grammar... you end up with something sweeter and even more delicious than ever!  Are you excited yet?  Well I am.  Now I always start with my sugar mixture.  (No need for your fruit to be sitting around on the counter any longer than needed.)  For this pie the mixture called for sugar, cornstarch, ground cinnamon, a pinch of salt, and... quick-cooking tapioca?

This was my first run in with tapioca (though I doubt it will be my last).  Curious about what exactly I was about to put in my pie (and why) I looked up what tapioca is.  Tapioca is the starch from the rood of a cassava plant.  The Cassava root is normally toxic so it takes a lot of cleaning, pealing, detoxifying, and grinding to get the tapioca into an edible form.  Quick-cooking tapioca is tapioca flour mixed with water and then dried and ground up again... Well that's great and all, but why on earth did I need to put starch from a (previously toxic) root in my Summer Berry pie?!  Well it turns out that tapioca is a thickening agent.  The tapioca soaks up the berries juices and helps them to thicken and essentially solidify.  That way you don't end up with a liquid/berry mess... (Hahaha... you'll get why I'm laughing later).

So with the tapioca mystery solved I continued on with my day mixing up my sugar (and tapioca, and other random ingredients) to get this lovely image:

Next... the berries themselves.  The recipe left it open as to what berries I wanted to use; so I just went to the store and bought a Berry Medley.  Unfortunately this medley included strawberries... and with this pie strawberries were just not going to work.  With a sad heart I took out the strawberries (which were quickly devoured by my siblings) but before the strawberries were eaten I took a lovely picture of all of my berries together:

Well, so long strawberries!  Next the berries were coated with the sugar (and tapioca) mixture and laid to rest in their lovely dough-lined pan:

Doesn't that just look like Summer!  Oh, oh!!! Now I've gotten to the funnest part!  It is time for... (fanfare please) the beautifying of my Summer Berry Pie.  To accomplish this great task I used one simple tool:

I know what you're thinking... a cookie cutter?  Just wait until you see how perfect it was though!  Using this little flower cookie cutter I cut five flowers out of my top crust:

And then I took the cutouts and placed them on as well... (It's really easy to do.  You just dot the back of the cutout with a bit of water and place it on the top of the pie.)

Darling right?  And last but not least... I used a fork to crimp the edges:

Isn't it GORGEOUS?!  Oh and just look at it with a golden crust after baking:

I am so proud of this pie...  However, it is a rule that I must learn at least one lesson from each pie; and this one was no exception.  Remember how I was chuckling over the whole tapioca helping to a void a "liquid/berry mess?"  Well the instructions for this pie mentioned that after baking you are supposed to "let cool completely to set."  I happened to be a bit impatient; so I didn't wait.  On cutting into the pie and taking out a piece I was met with a bit of a surprise.  The filling seemed to be more liquid than solid... When I pulled out my piece the triangle hole I had left in the pie was quickly filled by the rest of the filling.  It turns out that the tapioca really needs to be cooled completely to do its job... Well the next day when I went to have another piece of pie (it makes an excellent breakfast) I discovered that the liquid filling had indeed solidified and I was easily able to cut a triangle piece out without any more filling spilling down into the new hole.  So I learned a bit about tapioca... It's REALLY useful.  And I should probably let pies cool completely if that's what the directions say.  But even in liquid form Summer Berry Pie is DELICIOUS!!!