Jane's Reign: Day Three!

Yesterday's Princess Bride liveTweet was so fun!!!!  Please remember, even if you missed watching with us, you can still enter our Princess Bride contest (or ANY of our contests/giveaways this week) until July 17. All the winners will be announced on the 18th.

In today's celebratory post, we're going to talk about . . . PIE.

Mmmmmm pie.

One of the funny bits that we do in MY LADY JANE has to do with Edward's obsession with blackberries. He loves all things blackberry: blackberry pie, blackberry pudding, blackberry cobbler. He loves blackberries so much, it almost might be considered unhealthy.

It IS unhealthy, because come to find out, Edward's blackberries are being poisoned.

Doh. Spoiler alert.

(Fun fact: in an early draft of MY LADY JANE, we didn't use the word "England." Instead, we said "Schmengland," as a way of emphasizing that we were talking about an alternate history. In that version, the thing that Edward loved to eat most in the world was "schmengelberries," which made us giggle every time we read it. Check out page 11 and substitute blackberries with "schmengelberries," and we dare you not to smile. Our agents thought the whole Schmengland / schmengelberries thing was too silly, and so we changed it. But we miss schmengelberries.)

Anyway. Today we're going to give you our recipe for Edward's Poisoned Blackberry Pie. It's a dish, we find, best served cold. So here goes:

Edward's Poisoned Blackberry Pie

Ingredients:

1 unbaked pie crust (I often use graham cracker crust for this, but regular crust will do)
*Also note that this recipe will make small small pies or one large one, so keep that in mind

The filling:
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups sour cream
1teaspoon of the poison of your choice (or, er, vanilla)
1 cup white sugar
1 pinch salt
1/3 cup flour
3 cups blackberries (or raspberries or SCHMENGELBERRIES, ha!)

The topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or almond, which is really good too)
1/4 cup butter, room temperature

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, beat egg into light and bouncy and lemon colored, Whisk in sour cream and poison / vanilla.

3. In a separate bowl, mis sugar, flour and salt together. stir in the egg mixture. Gently fold in the berries.

4. Pour into the pie crust.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until the center begins to set.

6. While it's baking, mix your topping. Combine the sugar, flour, and nuts, and then cut the butter into the mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs.

7. When the pie is done baking, take it out and sprinkle it with topping. Then return it to the oven for 10-15 more minutes, or until the topping is a nice golden brown.

8. Allow to cool totally. In fact this pie is best cold--it has a kind of custard filling, which just isn't as good warm or room temperature. Cool it and then chill it.

9. Top with a big dollop of whipped cream.

10. Die a painful death. It IS poisoned, after all.

Cynthia and a poisoned pie, shortly before her untimely demise.

The Contest

Now here comes the contest part, send us YOUR best poison and/or berry-related recipe. (We'll cook some of these up when we're on our next writing retreat! We can't wait!)   email it to us at ladyjanies@gmail.com under the subject line POISONED PIE CONTEST. The person who sends the one that sounds the tastiest to us will win a cooking-related MY LADY JANE prize pack. The winner will be announced on July 18.

What are you waiting for! Let's get cooking!