Friday, January 4, 2013

Pear pie with Gruyere crust. Just call me Chuck!

Let me start off by saying how much I am in love with Pushing Daisies. This show...is...adorable. Beyond adorable. It's filled with crime solving, beautiful colors, vintage clothing, cute singing, Lee Pace, and PIES! You will want a piece of pie every single time you watch. In the show, Ned (Lee Pace) is able to wake the dead with a touch of a finger, but only for a minute, or they will continue to live and someone else will die in their place. He's an average guy, a pie maker..owner of the Pie Hole. When his childhood love dies, he brings her back and keeps her alive. Between him, Olive, Chuck, and Emerson...the show is adorable. 

In the show, Chuck sends pies to her aunts to cheer them up, because they think she is dead. So she send them Pear pie with Gruyere crust. Uh...who didn't want pear pie with a delicious, cheesy, buttery crust afterwards? 

Anyway..this Sunday my friend Kim and I are going to a civil war reenactment. We want to pack a picnic and I told her I was making this pie. 

The recipe:

(For the crust):
2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt1 tablespoon sugar3 ounces of Gruyère, grated16 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into 1 in pieces6-7 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:
3 lbs of pears
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 flour


Grate 3 oz of gruyere cheese. ( I had the hardest time finding this in Safeway..eventually the butcher came over and helped me. We had a nice laugh about it.)

Mix together in a bowl with flour, cheese, salt, and sugar. 


Now, cut butter into one inch pieces, and add to a KitchenAid or food processor with the flour mixture in the bowl. Process it until it becomes slightly crumbly. 
Take the dough and add 1 tablespoon of water at a time, mixing it in. 
Separate into two balls of dough ( one larger then the other) and wrap it and put it in the fridge overnight.

You're going to notice my pictures go from day to night now...the quality sucks!

Take the dough from the fridge and roll it out and place the bottom in a pie dish. 

Core and peel your pears and slice them. Add to a bowl, and add the sugar, flour, cinnamon, allspice, and vanilla. mix together and add to the pie dish. 

Roll out your top dough.



Add steam holes. Grate more cheese on top.

I baked this pie for an hour and 15 minutes at 350 but times may vary.


Just call me Chuck!