I’m inspired by someone on these boards mentioning Nantucket Pie, but that’s kind of an upside-down cake version despite its name. I want a proper pie made with cranberries and walnuts, and I want it to look approximately like this:
The problem is the internet is full of terrible untested recipes. I don’t know whether to trust Taste of Home or not. That recipe contains no egg or binder of any sort, which sounds wrong to me.
I’d tend to trust the Ocean Spray company to have tested their recipes, so there’s this one:
but the picture looks unappetizing and the photographer didn’t bother to show the filling, which is a bit odd. The recipe does have an egg, but doesn’t blend the filling; you just pour blended egg/sugar/butter over whole cranberries and call it a day. Hmm, maybe.
I’d do a bottom crust for sure, like the Ocean Spray picture but not like its recipe, and probably a lattice top crust like Taste of Home. I’m worried about excessive juiciness and excessive tartness of whole cranberries. My cranberries are fresh in the bag, and I have a lot of them.
Maybe not what you’d be looking for since you already have cranberries but I make a cranberry walnut chicken salad that people absolutely love. Unlike the traditional recipes using chopped cranberries I use Craisins. They won’t be excessively tart because they have sugar added, and obviously not excessively juicy because they’re dried.
There was a nice-sounding recipe on the NYT recently for a cranberry curd tart that sound really good. It has a crust made from ground hazelnuts and rice flour. Probably requires a subscription, though. They also had a bourbon pecan pie on there that I really want to try.
I make a cranberry apple pie with a lattice crust. I started with an apple pie recipe, replaced ~40% of the apple with cranberry and cut the rest into cranberry-size cubes, replaced the brown sugar with white sugar, and changed the spicing to use cardamon and allspice and a hint of clove instead of using the cinnamon-forward spices I use for apple pie.
It’s gorgeous. And I think it’s delicious.
Cranberries are not very juicy – I don’t think that will be a problem. (I mean, they are juicier than walnuts, but they are pretty dry as fruit goes.) They are very tart. I add a little more sugar than for an apple pie, but (1) I use tart apples and (2) I like my pies to be sour, and not too sweet.
oh, interesting. I’d probably put the curd in a traditional pie crust. With lemon curd, you use the juice and the zest, so there’s not much “solid” to deal with. How do they get cranberry flavor into a smooth curd?
My favorite use of cranberries is Susan Stamberg’s MIL’s cranberry relish. It sounds awful. The first year we brought it to Thanksgiving dinner people were reluctant to try it, but once they did they all wanted seconds. We double the recipe.
Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish
2 cups whole raw cranberries, washed
1 small onion
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons horseradish from a jar
Grind the raw berries and onion together in a food processor. Aim for a chunky puree.
Add everything else and mix. Put in a plastic container and freeze.
Early Thanksgiving morning, move it from freezer to refrigerator compartment to thaw. (“It should still have some little icy slivers left.”)
The relish will be thick, creamy, and shocking pink. (“OK, Pepto Bismol pink. It has a tangy taste that cuts through and perks up the turkey and gravy. Its also good on next-day turkey sandwiches, and with roast beef.”)
I’m not an experienced baker, but IME fruit pie fillings are usually thickened with a high-temperature starch like cornstarch or tapioca. I’ve never heard of egg as a fruit filling binder, but YMMV.
The egg isn’t used in the fruit filling. The fruit component is just cranberries.
The egg is used in the topping batter poured over the berries.
Layer cranberries on bottom of pie plate. Sprinkle with brown sugar and nuts. Beat egg in a medium mixing bowl until thick. Gradually add sugar, beating until thoroughly blended. Stir in flour and melted butter; blend well. Pour over cranberries.
I would have thought with that technique, rather than making a topping, the eggy mixture would trickle down through the fruit all the way to the bottom. Thus binding it all together, sort of, though it does sound like a weird cranberry omelet. Or (ETA), with the flour mixed into the eggs, more like the upside-down cake effect I’m trying to avoid. You’ve helped me think through this, thanks.
Some starch. I think I use corn starch. There is no egg. And the fruit isn’t really “bound”, there’s just enough starch to bind the juice that leaks out of the fruit. But I hate pie that’s pull of “goo”. I like fruit pies that have very little in the filling other than seasoned cooked fruit. I put the sugar and starch and spices on the fruit while I work on the pie shells, and let it sit long enough for the sugar to draw out some of the juice, and then I don’t add all that juice back to the filling. Cranberries don’t leak much juice, but apples do.
When I make a cherry pie, there’s some moisture between the cherries, but it’s mostly just packed cherries. I rarely eat commercial pies, because sugar and starch and juice are cheaper than fruit, and they are often mostly goo.
So if you really like eating the binding, my recipes may not be to your taste.
Cranberries gel very well after cooking and cooling, so I’m not sure you’d need much in the way of binding agents. You’d need to be sure they got hot enough for long enough to pop open while cooking - I typically bake double-crust fruit pies at between 375° and 400° F for an hour or so, and I suspect that would do it. Alternatively, you could essentially make cranberry sauce on the stove and then bake that in a pie crust.
Now I’m wondering if I want to try making one! I hope you let us know how it turns out.
Mash up the cranberry sauce with a fork. Add the cottage cheese, cool whip and Dry jello powder.
Stir and stir til it’s all nice and pink. Add chopped walnuts. Put in graham cracker crust. Refridge over night.
Serve with cool whip.
You’ll love it. No baking required.
(If you wanna be fancy sugar some whole cranberries and place around the edge of the pie)
There is a classic Southern dish involving cream cheese, jello, pineapple and I forget what else, that always appears at church events. I think it’s called Ambrosia? This sounds like the cranberry version, and sounds entirely delicious.
Nevertheless, I’m making a pie. Here’s what I’ve gleaned from this thread and assimilated with my own ideas, and if the thread ended now, it’s what I’d put into practice:
Leave the cranberries whole and raw
Add some white sugar and cornstarch – I think I’ll look up a recipe calling for fresh sour (pie) cherries and use the same amounts; the fruits seem about equally tart
Let that sit for a bit, and drain most of the juice but don’t expect much
I’m going to use a lot of walnuts, maybe 1/2 as much walnuts as cranberries, roughly chopped
Maybe a tiny amount of cinnamon? Not sure about spices. If it were cherry, I’d add almond extract, but not sure about that either.
At the point of making a lattice, I’ll probably say the hell with it and just put on a top crust. Sprinkled sugar isn’t my usual style, but somehow seems like it would be nice here.
Bake well because the cranberries need to burst. Call it 375 for an hour.
I suspect you’ll need less cornstarch than you would for cherries, but that sounds like what I’d try. If you’re thinking about more spices, some orange zest might add a nice note, and I feel like it would go well with cinnamon (I usually am in favor of cinnamon, though). You won’t want to skimp on the sugar!
You won’t get any juice to speak of from leaving whole cranberries with sugar.
Consider cardamom and/or allspice instead of cinnamon.
Adding some orange zest or extract sounds nice.
How long you need to cook it depends in part on how large the pie is, and what temp the ingredients start at. Cook it until you see juice bubbling. Or until a thermometer reads… I dunno, but I’d go for boiling.
The cooked cranberries look pretty, so a lattice crust will be rewarding if you get around to it.
I’d guess you need less cornstarch and more sugar than for cherries. You may not need any cornstarch.