“Easy as pie.”  That phrase leaves me miffed.  To me, pies always seemed hard.  And even though my husband has not so subtly professed his love for pie (that is: his love for me making him a pie) I had not attempted one, because it seemed hard.  Finicky.  Precise.  Not my type of thing.

But still wanted to try… one day.  So I added it to my 30 before 30 list.

Now, I’ve made “cheater pies” before - you know, crumb crusts with pudding fillings and such… but not a real pie, with crust and stuff.  But when my mom gave me two bags of frozen Saskatoon berries, I figured the pie’s day had come.

I used the cream cheese pastry dough recipe from my favourite cookbook “Mad Hungry”.  It’s in the book to make savoury chicken pocket pies, but Lucinda (the author) says she uses it for sweet pies too… so I thought I’d give it a try, because it’s tasty and forgiving to work with.

She has a pie dough recipe in the book, but with all of the stuff saying “You CAN make pie dough!” It kind of makes me feel like… “Why are you insisting so much that I can?!  Is it because it’s hard and most people feel they can’t?!?  Uh oh… I don’t think I can do this!!”  Probably not the intended outcome.  Plus I’m very much an “ain’t broke don’t fix it” kinda’ gal, and since I’d made the cream cheese dough before I thought I’d give it a whirl in a berry pie.

 For the filling I used a suggested recipe from a girl named Caroline.  Her mom’s a stellar cook, and I’d heard her Saskatoon berry pie is pretty killer too.  It’s fairly simple: honey, berries, and cornstarch.  I had lots of berries, and not so much honey so I added a bit of sugar too (especially since I knew the dough would be a bit savoury.)

Then for the part I was excited about…

Making the pie pretty!  Weaving the top was ridiculously easy.  And then with the scraps…

I did this!

I rolled out the scraps and stuck the dough in the freezer for about 5 minutes to firm up.  (Could have gone longer, though.)  Then I cut out leaves using a butter knife.

And there it is!  Ain’t she a beaut’?

And in the end… it wasn’t that hard after all!