Summer Fruit Cocktail Pie: A Love Affair

In our family we are not big on traditions, to say the least. Even on birthdays, we don’t usually do much, beyond a card and sometimes a practical gift. Us adults are usually happier to get rid of things than to accumulate new ones. Still, we do have a semi-tradition of making a special cake for each other’s birthdays.

For the past few years I’ve made Maya a Blueberry Ice Cream cake. It involved a chocolate base with a layer of homemade blueberry ice cream and then a layer of either blueberry sauce or blueberry sorbet, homemade as well, of course. Everyone loved it, but I figured that this year I should maybe try something new.

I was trying to think of something to make, when I realized that the answer was staring at me every time I opened the fridge. You see, we had just returned from a week-long hiking trip to Cathedral Provincial Park. On the way back, we stopped in Keremeos to buy some fruit.

That area, the Okanagan, is famous for its fruit. The highway is lined with fruit stands. The farm stands have nice produce, and are convenient since one can buy many things in one place, but in many cases they are a middle man between the farmer and the buyer. Plus, it’s fun to see where the fruit is grown, and maybe even pick it ourselves. So, we’ve always tried to buy directly from farms when possible.

After asking around, we found a back street lined with farms with fruit for sale. We stopped at one to get peaches, and then at another just opposite it get cherries and plums. While we waited for the fruit to be picked on the spot (does it get any fresher?!), we were offered “as many cherries as you want” from a huge container of seemingly fine cherries that could not be sold due to wind damage or something of the sort. The last time this happened, we ended up picking and taking home 130lbs of cherries… This time I was a bit worried about having time to actually process all those cherries, and besides, our car was packed to the brim. Still, we stood there stuffing our faces with cherries from that magical container till we could not eat more and had to start driving home.

We ended up with over 100 lbs combined of cherries, peaches, plums, and blueberries. Just another example of our love affair with fruit. After one of our fruit-buying-sprees we often get asked – what do you do with all that fruit?! The reality, which is only a little embarrassing, is that we eat almost all of it… Still, once I packed all of the fruit into the fridge, besides the peaches which needed some time to ripen fully, there wasn’t room for anything else. So, something had to be done. Of course, a single pie would hardly put a dent in our fruit supply. Still, I was comforted by the idea that I’d be contributing to the family effort in a small way.

Fruit pies are delicious, but faced with all these options – a peach pie, or a plum pie, or a blueberry pie, or a cherry pie, how to decide?! Plus, I needed something special. Then I started thinking that maybe I didn’t have to actually decide, I could just combine all the fruit. I was a little worried that if I mixed it all together, I would get a mishmash in which it would be hard to tell what is what. Luckily, that didn’t happen, each fruit tastes and looks distinctly different. One thing I love about this pie is that each bite contains a different combination of fruits, giving a different flavour. To choose a recipe as the base, I leafed through our trusty copy of Baking and Neil chose a plum pie with cut-out hearts, which I dutifully recreated. Give it a try, perhaps?

Summer Fruit Cocktail Pie

Ingredients for pastry:
2 cups (250g) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons (140g) cold butter, cut in pieces
1/4-1/2 cup ice water
milk, for glazing

Ingredients for filling:
About 3/4 lb (350g) each of cherries, blueberries, plums, and peaches, or your choice of seasonal fruit
Grated rind 1 lemon
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
a pinch of salt
a pinch of nutmeg

1. Mix the flour, salt, and butter in a food processor or using a pastry blender until it resembles coarse crumbs.
2. Stir in just enough water to bind the dough. Gather into two balls, one slightly larger than the other. Wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 220°C (425°F).
4. Grease a 9-inch pie pan.
5. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the larger dough ball to a round about 3mm (1/8″) thick. Transfer to the greased pan and trim the edge.
6. Prepare the fruit – pit the cherries, plums, and peaches, and cut the plums and peaches into large pieces. Mix all the filling ingredients and transfer to the shell.
7. Roll out the remaining dough and place on a baking tray lined with wax/parchment paper. Stamp out four heart shapes and reserve them. Transfer the dough to the pie using the paper.
8. Trim to leave a 3/4″ inch overhang. Fold the top edge under the bottom and pinch to seal. Arrange the dough hearts on top. Brush with the milk. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 180°C (350°F) and bake 30-35 minutes more. If the crust browns too quickly, protect it with a sheet of aluminum foil.