This recipe for raspberry pie is very easy. By using frozen berries, you can make a delicious and beautiful pie at any time of the year; if you use a storebought pie crust, there is almost no prep work at all. If you want the recipe, as well as my review, keep reading!
Recipe for Raspberry Pie with Frozen Raspberries
Raspberries are a classic summer fruit. With a nice combination of tartness and sweetness, they are many people’s favorite fruit for jams, pastries, and cake fillings. The fresh fruits reach their peak in mid summer, so it is no surprise that August 1 is National Raspberry Cream Pie Day in the United States. Although the fruit and cream version has its own national day, I wanted to make a double crust fruit pie with raspberries. I love pies such as peach pie, apple pie, and cherry pie, so I wanted to see how a raspberry version would turn out.
As with almost all of my fruit pies, I turned to the frozen food section of the grocery store to buy the fruit. Although I recommend fresh fruit if you have access to high-quality, homegrown berries, frozen fruit is usually the next best option. Frozen fruit is flash frozen at its peak, so it is usually more flavorful than most fresh fruit at the grocery store. Frozen fruit is also available year-round, so you can make a pie at any time. In addition, it is already washed and peeled, using frozen fruit reduces the prep work to almost zero. If you have the option, I definitely recommend using frozen fruits and berries in your pies.
Making the Raspberry Pie Filling
When it came time to make the raspberry pie filling, I started by first defrosting the fruit. When I opened the bags, I noticed that many of the raspberries had fallen apart. This was very different from when I made my blackberry pie and blackberry cobbler: most of the blackberries stayed whole before baking. Frozen peaches for peach pie usually do not fall apart, either. Thinking back to how raspberries are carefully packed in containers with soft bottoms, I realized that raspberries are very delicate, so I should not be surprised that many of them had fallen apart in the bag.
After defrosting the berries, I added sugar. This was my first raspberry pie, so I was not certain how much sugar to add. Based off of the strawberry pie and blueberry pie that I had recently made, I estimated how much sugar I would need. Although I was pleased with the amount of sugar, I admit that perhaps a little bit more would have made the pie better–but for a first attempt, I was very satisfied with the level of sweetness since most new recipes takes two if not three attempts to perfect.
I also added a bit of salt and lemon juice to the filling to help balance out the flavors. Even though salt may seem a bit out of place in a pie recipe, a bit of salt in desserts helps to both balance out the sweetness and bring out the other flavors, too. The lemon juice may seem a bit odd as well, especially since raspberries are already a bit tart. Even though I did not use as much lemon juice in this raspberry pie recipe as in my blueberry or strawberry pie recipes, I felt that a little bit of lemon juice was still necessary in order to both balance out the sweetness and awaken the other flavors. As you can see, a bit of salt and an acid can help to round out the flavor profile of pie fillings.
Although using a storebought crust would make the recipe even easier, as usual I used my homemade oil and butter pie crust. It is super simple and delicious, and you do not have to worry about cutting in cold butter. I made two batches of two, one for the bottom and one for the top. After putting the bottom pie crust in the pie plate, I then poured in the raspberry pie filling, then added the top. I then cut a few slits in the top for the steam to escape, as well as dusted the top of the pie with sugar for extra sweetness and crunch. The pie was then ready for the oven.
Recipe for Raspberry Pie Review
Once my raspberry pie came out of the oven, I couldn’t wait to try it. I like raspberry jam and raspberry-filled pastries, so I was sure that I would fall in love with the pie at first bite. The pie was perfectly golden brown, and when I put the first slice on the plate, I could see that the filling was a beautiful, bright red color. I wouldn’t wait to dig in…
Within a few moments of the first bite, I was a bit disappointed. Although the pie was good, it was not amazing…but I couldn’t put my figure on exactly why. I think that part of it was that perhaps it needed a bit more sugar, perhaps an extra two tablespoons in addition to the 1 1/4 cups I used.
However, I think that the main issues for me was the texture. When you slice a fruit pie, you can usually see little pieces of fruit suspended in thickened juice. Yet, as I already pointed out, I saw that many of the raspberries were already falling apart when I opened the bag. Even more fell apart during the cooking process, resulting in a pie filling that looked a lot like raspberry jam. In addition to lacking whole berries, the filling was also very seedy. Although raspberry seeds do not normally bother me, I did not like them in this pie. When I tried to figure out why I did not care for the filling, I immediately thought back to my blackberry pie. In that pie some of the berries broke down into the filling while others stayed whole, so the seeds were mixed in with a lot of fruit flesh and jellied filling. However, with the raspberry pie, there was no jellied juice or fruit flesh, just a thick mash of crushed raspberries, heavily concentrating the seeds. I did a Google search for “raspberry pie recipe,” and all of the pies looked like mine: hardly any whole raspberries in the filling.
As I said earlier in this article, the evidence suggests that raspberries are soft and delicate, so there probably isn’t much you can do to prevent them from breaking down. In fact, after making this pie, I made a mixed berry pie, and I realized that while most of the strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries remained whole, the raspberries fell apart. When I tried the mixed berry pie, my suspicions were confirmed: compared to other berries, raspberries do not hold up well to neither transporting nor baking.
Even though I feel like I am a bit critical of this pie, I wanted to mention that I did like it. However, like with my blackberry crisp recipe which seemed to be overly seedy, I now think that raspberries are not the best choice for a pie. It seems that raspberries are very delicate and break down very easily, compacting the seeds inside of the filling. Knowing what I know now, I would still recommend making a raspberry pie if you absolutely love raspberries. However, if you are looking for a fruit pie that will blow you away by how delicious it is, there are probably better options.
Recipe for Raspberry Pie
Ingredients
- 24 oz frozen raspberries (680 grams)
- 1 1/4 cups white sugar (263 grams)
- **However, looking back, I think that extra 2 Tablespoons of sugar would have been better)
- 8 Tablespoons cornstarch (80 grams)
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice (15 grams)
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 2 9-inch pie crusts
- *2 Tablespoons of sugar to sprinkle on top of pie (30 grams)
Instructions
- Defrost frozen berries
- Put one 9-inch pie crust in a pie plate.
- Parbake one 9-inch pie crust at 350 F for 5 minutes.
- Mix thawed berries with other ingredients for the filling.
- Pour filling into the parbaked pie shell
- Cover with second pie crust, crimp edges, and cut slits to release steam.
- Sprinkle extra 2 Tablespoons of sugar on top
- Bake at 350 F for 57 minutes (55 minutes would probably be OK)
YouTube Video
Be sure to watch my YouTube video tutorial:
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