Ground Cherry Pie

One of the more peculiar things growing in our garden are ground cherries. My mom was looking through seed catalogs with Amy when we were deciding what to plant for the year and said she'd pay for the ground cherry seeds if we'd grow them so she could see what they were like. They are very neat to grow with kids, as they fall off the vine when ripe and are easy to harvest. Each ground cherry is in a little papery wrapper like a tomatillo. They were easy to grow, but we were at a bit of a loss what to do with them. The description I'd read of them as "pinappley tomatoes" seems accurate to me. No one in our family was very fond of them raw and I intended to make a chutney with them that I could mail to my mom. Sadly for her, I tried making a ground cherry pie first. We were all a bit skeptical about how it would taste, but as soon as we'd eaten one bite we were ground cherry converts. I don't think Clara and Amy will part with a single ground cherry for any other purpose.

I ended up making up a recipe. Since we didn't have quite enough of the ground cherries in the first batch we brought in to fill the pie pan. I added some blueberries from our freezer, which turned out to be magic. We're still seeking the perfect top crust, as I've made two now and I still don't like how the crumble crust looks on it (though it still tastes delicious)--I think a lattice top will end up being the best bet to hold up to the moisture of the pie. In case you'd like to do a little experimenting of your own, here's the recipe:

Filling: 2 1/4 (two and one quarter) C ground cherries

1/2 C frozen blueberries (or fresh blueberries and cut baking time by a few min.)

1 T all-purpose flour

2 T lemon juice

lemon zest (I grate directly over the pie)

cinnamon

9" pie shell (I use the Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe or Joy of Cooking recipe)

Crumble crust (will taste fine but look a little ugly--you may want to experiment with another top crust):

6 T all-purpose flour

6 T white sugar

4 T butter

Dash of cinnamon (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Place ground cherries and blueberries into the pie shell--stir gently with hands to combine. Grate lemon zest (amount to your liking) over the top of the fruit. Sprinkle 1 T flour and 2 T lemon juice over the fruit. Sprinkle cinnamon if desired.

3. Combine crust ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, optional cinnamon) in a medium bowl. I tried it once with very cold butter grated into the flour and sugar and then combined, and once with softened butter combined with the flour and sugar with my hands and then dropped over the fruit. Both worked fine. In any event, top your fruit mixture with your crust.

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 min. Reduce temp. to 375 and continue to bake until fruit is bubbly and top crust looks golden, about 30-45 more min. If your bottom crust starts looking browned before your top crust is finished, cover the edge with foil for the rest of the baking time. A pie with frozen blueberries may take a little longer than one with fresh. I also tried it once in a 425 degree oven for 55 min. in a brown paper bag on a cookie sheet. That also made a delicious but sort of ugly pie. :)

Here's Clara's opinion of ground cherry pie...