I have enjoyed reading the new cookbook Book on Pie by Erin McDowell and watching the food52 videos on her baking series. We prefer fruit pies but in the winter fruit is not as good or plentiful. I find custard pies often too sweet so the swamp pie seems like a good compromise of having blueberries and lemons with vanilla and cream. The streusel topping seems to add good crunch and textural constrast. The recipe is a little more involved since the crust is parbaked and there are two separate fillings. I usually make the crust the night before and keeping in the fridge makes the crust easier to roll out. I still prefer a crust with butter and shortening to get nice flakiness. I would probably rate the recipe as being an advanced pie recipe with all of the steps and having to pour the custard into the dish after most of the baking. I chose to use a high sided pie dish to hold the extra liquid.
Crust
Ingredients
- 160g all purpose flour
- 1/2t salt
- 4T unsalted butter
- 4T vegetable shortening
- 1 egg white for wash
Steps
- quick whisk of flour and salt in a large bowl
- make sure butter and shortening are cold
- cut butter into 1/2 inch cubes, coat flour
- cut shortening into small pieces add to flour mixture
- gently squeeze butter and shortening until mixture starts to resemble coarse sand
- make a well, add 60g of ice cold water
- mix with hands or two butter knives until starts to come together
- add 1T or water additional until can form into a ball
- form into a disk and cover with plastic wrap
- keep in fridge overnight
- preheat oven to 375F
- next day roll out dough, place in pie dish
- brush with egg whites
- add parchment paper and pie weights
- bake 15-17 minutes, starting to look baked and almost turning golden
- remove pie weight and parchment, bake additional 3-4 minutes edges turning golden
- let cool completely
blueberry filling
Ingredients
- 680g or 1.5 pounds of fresh blueberries
- 1 lemon zested and squeezed
- 99g or 1/2 cup of granulated sugar
- 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and seeds scraped
- 23g or 3T flour
- 1/2t salt
Steps
- combine and toss blueberries, lemon zest, lemon juice
- in bowl add sugar, scrap the vanilla pod to get seeds out
- stir flour and salt to sugar
- sprinkle and mix sugar/flour into blueberries until combined
Streusel
Ingredients
- 40g old fashioned oats
- 60g flour
- 15g whole wheat flour
- 53g light brown sugar
- 1/4t baking powder
- 1/4t salt
- 1/4t cinnamon
- 4T unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 cubes
Steps
- stir oats, flours, brown sugar in a bowl
- drop butter and combine with hands until turns clumpy
- add blueberry mixture to parbaked crust as even layer
- add streusel in clumps on top
- bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes
Custard
Ingredients
- 176g 3/4c heavy cream
- 27g, 2T light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1t vanilla extract
Steps
- start making custard about 5m before the 35m pie baking time is up
- whisk the cream, brown sugar, egg, vanilla to combine
- pull pie out of oven, carefully pour the custard into the bubbling filling
- bake 10-15 additional minutes until the custard is set around the edges and jiggly in the center
- let pie cool completely before slicing and serving
