North Dakota · Dessert
North Dakota Sour Cream Raisin Pie
- Intermediate
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, richness that coats and comforts, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 1 blind-baked 23cm pie shell
- 250g raisins
- 250ml water
- 300ml sour cream
- 150g sugar
- 3 egg yolks
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp cloves
- For meringue: 3 egg whites, 75g sugar
The skills inside
Whipping a meringuePie crust & blind baking
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the raisins in the water 10 min until plump; drain. 10 min
- Whisk the sour cream, sugar, yolks, cornstarch, and spices in a pan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until thick.
- Fold in the raisins and pour into the baked shell.
- Whip the whites with the sugar to stiff peaks and spread over, sealing to the crust.
- Bake at 175C for 15 min until the meringue is golden. Cool and chill. 15 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
Whipping a meringue 40 recipes
- Bowl and whisk are clean and dry with no trace of fat or yolk. Grease prevents the foam outright, and there is no recovering a bowl that had it partway through.
- The sugar went in gradually once the whites were already foaming, rather than all at once at the start.
- No grit: a little rubbed between finger and thumb feels smooth, so the sugar has dissolved into the foam rather than sitting in it.
- Stiff peaks means the tip stands with a slight bow when the whisk lifts, and the bowl can be tipped without the mass moving in it.
- Glossy and smooth rather than chalky or dull, with no liquid gathering underneath it in the bowl.
Where it goes wrong It was whipped past stiff peaks. A minute beyond glory the protein network tightens and tears, the foam turns grainy and matte, water weeps out beneath it, and folding that into anything gives a mixture that collapses on the way to the oven.
At the Table
- The Pour
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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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