Raspberry Pi: Pi, Pie and more Pie!

Lately, there has been a lot of pie talk in my life. At work with the credit-card sized computer Raspberry Pi, tasting Key Lime Pie for the first time now that im living in Florida, The Life of Pi winning at the Oscars, and of course the recent official Pi Day occurring on March 14 (3.14)


With all this pie talk, I decided to bake a pie! This past thursday, I went on a run and half way through I came to the decision to continue my run all the way to the grocery store. Sweating and out of breath from my 3 mile run, I proceeded to shop for pie ingredients.


The type of pie: raspberry!  First off because it is absolutely delicious, as a person not fond of very sweet pastries, raspberry pie is a good balance of tart and sweet. Secondly because of all the computer raspberry pi talk at work. It just seemed like a perfect fit. With all my ingredients bought i continued my walk back home to bake my pie. 

The recipe comes from my Newfoundland trip back in 2010, where I first learned how to bake pies from my friend's aunt in the 200 person town of River of Ponds. The whole pie is baked from scratch from the filling to the crust. 

Here are some notes and what I found out from my recent pie adventures: 
1) Frozen raspberries produce a more watery consistency for the raspberry filling then fresh berries when boiled. Usually I use fresh berries but frozen was all that was available. 
2) With no rolling pin around to make my crust, a large beer glass also does the job. 

Recipe for 1 Pie:
Not really exact since I play with the consistency of the batter as I make it. Like most things I let my intuition and gut feeling be my guide.  But for the most part these portions work. 

Crust: 
4 Cups flour
1/2 cup butter/margarine
1/2 cup shortening 
1/2 cup sugar 
2 Tsp Baking Powder
1 Egg
1/2 cup milk 

Filling: 
Bag of frozen or fresh raspberries
sugar 

Boil the raspberries and add sugar to taste. Let the raspberries filling cool off. Best if left in the fridge for a day.

Preheat oven to 350. For crust: Mix all dry ingredients then mix in all the wet ingredients until the batter becomes soft enough to roll out. Make sure its not too watery or too "greasy" from the shortening. Add more ingredients accordingly to fix the problem of it being too dry or too wet. Make the bottom pie crust and place onto the pie pan, add the filling, roll out the top crust and place on top of the filling. Make sure to poke air holes in the top crust to let the air get through while baking. Put in the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes, until crust is nice, brown and crispy. Take out of oven and eat!!!

My pies, with Mickey ears and all! Delicious!