Marionberry Pie

One of the things I love about living in the Willamette Valley is our access to the berries that thrive here. Every summer, we make a special trip to the local u-pick for marionberries because we love them so much, and freeze as many as we can for jam and pie and smoothies throughout the year. There’s just something about the way they hit the taste buds that I can’t describe, but we all crave them and consider them to be one of our favorite flavors of the summer.

This year, we harvested our berries on the early side, so they’re a little more tart than usual. To be honest, we’ll probably head back in another week or two to harvest more at a riper stage, but it’s no loss to us. The tart ones are perfect for pie and jam. In fact, I made my first pie of the summer yesterday with these, and it was so delicious that I’ve come here to jot down the recipe before the details leave my mind.

It’s a little difficult to find recipes for marionberry pie online since they’re so specific to us locally, so I based mine off a recipe I like for blackberry pie and tweaked it from there. If you can get your hands on marionberries, even frozen, I highly recommend it. The riper your berries are, the less sugar you’ll need, and you may want to add a little citrus peel or juice to adjust the acidity as well. In any case, keep in mind that the berries I used in this recipe were quite tart, and it was perfection.

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Marionberry Pie

Author: A Wooden Nest

The marionberries I used for this pie were fairly tart. If your berries are more ripe, you may want to use less sugar, and perhaps add some lemon juice to increase the acidity.

Ingredients

Pie Crust

• 1 cup (2 sticks) of salted butter, sliced
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons cold water

Marionberry Pie Filling

• 5 cups marionberries, fresh or frozen
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons milk

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a food processor, add your butter, flour, salt and sugar. Pulse until the butter has evenly distributed throughout the flour.
3. Add your water while the food processor is running, one tablespoon at a time, until it begins to clump up. Stop the food processor and then pour out your dough on a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough in half and form two discs. Wrap discs and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
4. In a bowl, combine the berries, flour, sugar and pinch of salt. Let sit for 15 minutes. If your berries are frozen, you can combine them all in a saucepan with 1/4 cup water on medium-low heat, and stir now and then, mixing all together, until the berries begin to soften. Remove from heat
5. Remove pie dough from refrigerator and roll out the first disc over a lightly floured surface. Transfer the rolled out dough to a 9-inch pie dish. Fill with the berries, and then roll out the second disc of dough. At this point you can either form a solid top for your pie, making sure to create vents for the steam to escape, or you can cut your dough into strips as I've done to form a lattice top. Once you're done, crimp the edges. Brush the top with milk, and sprinkle a bit of sugar over it. The milk will help the sugar adhere.
6. Place pie on a cookie sheet and into your preheated oven. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes, and then reduce the oven temperature to 375F degrees. Bake for another 20-30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown, checking every 10 minutes or so.
7. Once done, remove from oven and let come down to room temperature. Slice and serve! We like ours with ice cream. Specifically, the Tillamook marionberry pie ice cream flavor. Enjoy!