Butter Crisp Pie Crust + sweet & savory pies

This is the year that I'm trying out lots of pie recipes to find that perfect pie crust and the best sweet and savory pies around.  My Jordan has been requesting a homemade cherry pie forever so it made it to the top of the list.  

I found a cherry pie recipe and thought it sounded pretty good.  It's called The Best Cherry Pie Recipe....how could I go wrong?  The blog post with the recipe is here and the Pinterest link is here.  The pie filling did not fail.  I  did tweak it a bit to add my own special touches but the original recipe is pretty darn good.  Thick and sweet and tart.  It beats canned pie filling any day.  I started with these canned Oregon cherries.  

 I made the pie filling just as the recipe called for and it turned out beautifully.

 Now on to the pie crust.  I've tried several crusts over the past few months and just wasn't totally satisfied with them. I finally found the pie crust that my mom uses.  She makes the best pies so I was hoping this crust would be the one.  I gave it a try and filled my pie to the brim.

I even cut out a cherry shape to top my pie.

The crust baked up so nice and brown.  My mom always brushes her pies with milk and then sprinkles on sugar. This makes the pie brown nicely and it has the sweetest little crunch to it.

I'm thinking this looks pretty good and at this point we couldn't wait for the pie to cool.

Tada.  It was good, folks.  The crust was flaky but tender.  The pie filling was so thick and sweet and tart.

We all gave it two thumbs up.

I also tried the crust out in a savory pie.  This is Pioneer Woman's back and egg quiche from one of her cookbooks.  It was equally as good and the pie crust was buttery and crisp and yummy.

So I think I've found my perfect pie crust....for now anyway.  I needed about a half more of the recipe to fill my larger pie plates so I suggest doubling the recipe and keeping the leftover crust for little sugar and cinnamon roll ups, etc. I'm not sure if pie pans were smaller back in the day or what but this recipe was a little hard to get a full pie out of it. This pie crust is unlike any other recipes I've seen as it has milk in it.  I think next time I'll try the butter flavor shortening to see if that makes a difference in taste.

Here's my mama's recipe:

Butter Crisp Crust

by Michelle Wooderson

2 cups flour
2/3 shortening
3/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
3 Tablespoons butter
1/3 cup milk (plus a little more for brushing the top of the pie)
Sugar for sprinkling

Mix flour, shortening and butter together until consistency of cornmeal.  Stir in the milk.  Chill dough in refrigerator for easier handling. Assemble pie and brush top with milk.  Sprinkle with sugar.  Bake for 20 minutes at 425 degrees then lower the oven temperature to 375 and add a pie crust shield to protect the outer edges of the crust from burning.  Bake for another 30-40 minutes, until the crust looks nicely browned and the juices bubble up thickly.  Remove from oven and let cool for several hours before eating.  Recipe is for a two crust pie but I suggest doubling and saving the excess for another use.

Let me know if you give it a try.  I can't wait to try more pies now!