Secret Pear Pie

Secret Pear Pie
10 April 2014

Autumn has come and she is beautiful. It is still warm enough to not be uncomfortable, but cool enough to rug up in your favourite coat and scarf. The soft gentle rain and the low cloud make these days dreamy. It was the perfect day to check up on our secret pear tree.

I tried to find the secret tree weeks ago, but it was so secret I had forgotten where we left it. Fortunately for sensible men, Ro found it and dropped a google maps pin for me. I now have no reason to ever lose my secret pear tree again.

It is such a beautiful thing to do with your children. To go on an adventure, to find food on a run down bridge on an obscure country road. To be able bag yourself a stash of free pears, the best we have ever tasted. To return there year after year, say hi and thank it for yet another awesome supply of autumnal treats.

I love more than anything to watch the girls laughing and smiling at the pure joy of finding another pear they can reach. Popping it in their bag. Kissing caterpillars with rain drops on their noses.

This is our season. These are the experiences I now long for each year. I feel so insanely lucky my kids grow up knowing this as their childhood. I hope they visit this tree every year, forever. And maybe their kids will too.

OK, let’s make pie.

Secret Pear Pie

What You Need

Base

(I use Maggie Beer’s Sour Cream Pastry, it is SUPER EASY and doesn’t need heaps of chilling time in the fridge).

• 125ml sour cream
• 250g plain flour
• 200g unsalted butter chilled
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• White Sugar for sprinkling

Filling

• 5 pears, peeled, cored and sliced
• Juice and zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup white sugar

What You Need To Do

1. To make the pastry, dice the butter, then pulse with the flour in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
2. Add the sour cream and continue to pulse until the dough starts to incorporate into a ball.
3. Wrap the dough in plastic film and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
4. While the pastry is chillin’, preheat the oven to 200˚C and prepare the pears.
5. Pop your sliced pears, sugar, lemon juice and zest in a bowl and stir until all the pears are coated in sugary lemony goodness.
6. That’s it, pretty easy.
7. Roll the chilled pastry out until 3 mm thick and lay gently in to your pie tin of choice.
8. Trim the edges around the pie tin with a knife.
9. Pop your pears in the pie crust, nice and neat.
10. Grab the left over pastry and roll out to make a lid for your pie.
11. I like to make a lattice one so the juices all come out through it, it also looks pretty fancy.
12. If you want to make a lattice lid, just cut your rolled out pastry in to strips and place in a criss cross manner over your pie.
13. Cut off any bits that are too long.
14. Fold your pie bottom over your lid. You can crimp it and take it to a whole new level of fancy, but that level is to high for me.
15. Brush the egg over your pie pastry and sprinkle the white sugar over the top.
16. Pop it in the over for about 20 – 25 mins (keep checking, remember my oven is dumb).
17. Eat pie with truckloads of vanilla ice cream.
18. You should really make two of these at once.