Plum-Good Pie Recipes

Enjoy some great recipes for strawberry, peach and plum pies:

Mile High Strawberry Pie

When it is too hot to bake, Bobbi Machado likes to make this freezer pie. She says you need to make sure you beat the strawberry mixture for 15 minutes, no more, no less. Let the pie stand at room temperature about 10 minutes before serving.

Ingredients:

2 egg whites
10 oz. frozen strawberries
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 pint whipping cream
1 baked pie shell

Preparation:

Beat egg whites until fluffy. Add frozen strawberries (still frozen), lemon juice and sugar. Beat 15 minutes, no less. Whip cream until fluffy. Fold whipped cream and strawberry mixture together. Pour into a baked pie shell and freeze.

Prep time: 30 minutes

Serves: 8

Fresh Peach Pie

You can use a food processor for making the pastry crust, but cookbook author Marion Cunningham recommends using your hands so you'll learn the right "feel" of the dough. This is her recipe.

Ingredients for the peach filling:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
4 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. ground mace or grated nutmeg, optional

Basic pie dough ingredients:

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup cold water
2 or 3 Tbsp. butter, optional

Preparation for the peach filling:

Mix sugar and flour in large bowl. Add peaches, lemon juice and mace and toss well. Set aside.

Preparation for the pie dough:

Mix flour and salt in large bowl. Drop shortening on top of flour mixture. Break shortening into six pieces and roll them around in flour mixture. Dip hands into bowl and rub one chunk of shortening between your thumb and fingers, so that shortening and flour blend into little pieces. Let fall back into bowl. Keep going to bottom of bowl with hands and gathering shortening and flour, rubbing and letting it drop back into bowl. Do this until mixture becomes small, irregular bits of shortening with flour. Add water all at once by sprinkling on top of mixture. Stir with fork to incorporate water.

Generously flour work surface and hands. Scoop up dough, plop it onto work surface and pat into ball. Divide into two equal portions. Roll one into a 12-inch circle, lifting dough and sprinkling more flour onto surface as needed to prevent dough from sticking.

To transfer to pie pan, roll dough loosely around rolling pin and unroll, starting at far side of pie pan, so that dough drops into pan. Drape dough onto bottom and sides of pan. Avoid stretching dough. Let about 1-1/2 inches of dough hang over the outer edge of pan.

Pile fruit onto dough. Scatter bits of butter over fruit. Roll out remaining half of dough for top crust and drape over pie. Trim away excess dough, leaving enough to tuck under top of pie pan edge. Crimp edges and cut several vents in top.

Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake until juices bubble around edges on top of pie and crust is lightly browned - about 40 minutes more.

Serves: 8

Plum Pie

Bobbi Machado says her absolute favorite pie is a plum pie made with large Empress or President plums. Although she doesn't use a recipe when she makes her pies, this recipe is similar.

Ingredients:

prepared pastry, unbaked, for a double crust, 9" pie
1 qt. prune plums such as Empress or President, pitted and sliced into wedges
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 to 1/3 cup sifted flour
1/8 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
1 Tbsp. milk
1 Tbsp. sugar

Preparation:

Line pie pan with pastry dough, following the dough recipe. Toss plum wedges, sugar, flour, salt and lemon juice into a bowl.

Spoon plum filling into shell and dot with butter. Fit top crust over fruit, trim, seal and crimp edges. Brush crust with milk and sprinkle with the tablespoon of sugar. Bake 35 to 45 minutes at 425 degrees until lightly browned and bubbling.

Serves: 8