Recipe - Japanese Fruit Pie
December 6th, 2007
This pie is a family tradition, always present at Christmas and Thanksgiving. It is similar to a Pecan Pie, but with a little more body.
- 1 frozen pie shell
- 1 stick of butter, melted
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vinegar (Apple Cider type is best)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup raisins (gold or regular)
- 1/2 chopped nuts (normally use pecans)
- 1/2 cup coconut (shredded)
Blind bake the 9″pie shell, according to the package instructions. The pie is really moist and without this step, the crust doesn’t get done. The trick with blind baking is not burning the outer crust, when you finish the bake with the filling. You either don’t bake the crust as much, or use a Pie Crust Shield. Also be carefuly to watch the sides of the pie crust, as they tend to slide into the pie tin. I hand crimp the edges down, after thawing the frozen pie shell. (This also makes it look more like you made the shell too. Is that cheating?)
Start with the melted butter and mix in the sugar well, then add vinegar, vanilla and eggs. Add the raisins, nuts and coconut and mix until uniform. Dump everything into the pie shell and level it out. Bake at 300 degrees for 40-50 minutes. The top should be uniformly browned and the center firm.
While this pie is great the day it is baked, it gets better if put inside a gallon sized ziploc freezer bag and frozen. Something with the freezing of the pie makes the flavors meld together better. For a really handy pie, cut it before freezing. Then you can grab it out of the freezer and take it when you need to bring a dessert. The pie is really hard to cut when frozen, but the pieces get soft very quickly when served. The pie doesn’t loose its flavor even after a few months in the deep freeze.
December 24th, 2007 at 10:33 am
[...] best results, double wrap in plastic wrap, then drop in the deep freeze. As with the Japanese Fruit Pie, this helps the flavors to [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 6:11 am
All of you grandchildren might wonder where we got this recipe in the first place. After all, we have been eating this all of your lives.
Many moons ago, when your parents were kind of young, we used to spend Saturday mornings going to yard sales. A lot of their clothes in those days were purchased at these sales.
One day we went to Charlestown Square for the annual sale there. There were booths galore all around the square. I hardly ever purchase baked goods at these type things, but, the name of the pie intrigued me and I purchased it.
The lady who was manning the booth couldn’t remember exactly what was in it but the more she tried to list the ingredients, the more intrigued I got. I kept asking what fruit it had in it - I was thinking about fruitcake(I’ve made it with the same fruits that I use in fruitcake - in addition to the coconut and it is good that way). She said that the lady who made them had put the recipe on the pies the previous year, and, she wasn’t sure why the recipe was not included that year.
Granny (Flying Grandpa’s mom) and Aunt Sue (this was before Aunt Sue and Uncle Nathan were married) came over that night and we cut this pie to serve. Wow! It was an instant hit.
We wanted the recipe and I thought I might have to go to Charlestown to knock on doors to see if anyone had the recipe for it - surely someone would have this recipe if the lady put it on the pies in previous years.
Shortly after that - before I got the chance to go knock on doors - Granny was cleaning Mrs. Moore’s house in Charlestown and Mrs. Moore gave her some tarts that she was baking. These tarts tasted like the Japanese Fruit Pie so Granny got the recipe from her. The rest is, as they say, HISTORY.
Several years later Sister Valerie told me that she found the recipe published in a seafood cookbook that she had.
When Grandpa and I went to Mackinac Island we ate at the Grand Hotel and we tasted a variation of the pie. Their chef had made a cookie type crust - much like the one on the Pecan Fingers recipe we make. He baked the crust and then spread currant jelly over the crust and then poured a mixture that tasted like our pie over it to bake. He used golden raisins instead of the regular ones. Absolutely delicious!