Crazy-Easy YUMMY Pie Crust and AMAZING Fresh Berry-Rhubarb Pie

Afraid of making pies?  Don't be!!

Oh it's easy to be intimidated.  A truly yummy pie crust is rare - so many are just dry and sort of icky.  So you assume there's a magical technique, and only sweet grandmothers who have been doing it for fifty+ years can get it right, right?  Wrong.  It's so, so easy.

Just use this 3-ingredient recipe (really!!) and follow the tips left by reviewers (make 1.5 times the recipe, add 2 tsp sugar and 1 tsp salt, and stir the ice water and oil with a fork until creamy before adding).  You don't EVEN have to roll it out - you can just flatten half the dough as best you can, plop it in the pie dish, and pat with your fingers until it covers the dish and edges.  It tastes AMAZING.  Moist and flaky, my husband raves about it every time.

After you've pressed half the dough into your pie dish, fill the dish up using this amazing (and also crazy easy) recipe for Fresh Berry Rhubarb Pie.  It took first place in a national pie championship, and you won't be left wondering why.  My husband literally lost his train of thought after the first bite.  It was seriously SO good that I didn't even want ice cream; the ice cream detracted from the intense tangy berry taste and the perfect moist texture of the pie crust.   ** Note I did not bother refrigerating the berry/sugar mixture overnight (just a couple hours) and I did spoon all the berry juice into the pie with the berries.

Just Before Baking.

If you make this, do NOT underestimate (i.e., omit) on the lemon juice/butter addition.  And be sure to add real lemon juice, NEVER use the bottled stuff!!!  Adding lemon juice to other fruit is a never-fail.  Add it to watermelon with a little sugar and you have a jolly-rancher-esque fruit salad.  Mix lemon juice, sugar, and fresh chopped mint and add that to any fruit salad for a fun, tasty twist on the ordinary.  Mmmm... can't wait for summer!

Oh yes, the lattice work.  It's not necessary - you could roll the rest of the dough flat and cover the top of the pie and cut slits to vent, as the berry-rhubarb pie recipe describes. 

BUT if you want to go the extra mile (ten feet, really - this may be even easier than a flat top) you can start by making the strips - just roll the other half of the pie dough into a circle about the size of the top of the pie.  Leave it kind of thick so it's easier to work with (and chewier, and yummier) and then slice strips with a knife.  Then you can either wing it, like I did, which as you can see made it kind of sloppy but still fine, or do it the right way - which is also not actually that hard, shown in this video. 

Fresh out of the oven.

The Close Up

Mmmm.  So good.

Best of all, this is a relatively heart-healthy dessert!  Only 1 tbsp of butter in the entire pie, and only 1 tsp of salt :)  And blackberries are packed with antioxidants, which are increasingly recognized as beneficial to heart health!

** Disclaimer:  This is not a low-calorie food.  Obviously!!