Stone Fruit Custard Pie
It is officially stone fruit season which means for the last couple of weeks I’ve had apricots, nectarines, and plums at home. I don’t want to evoke my grandparents for every recipe, but stone fruits do remind me of all the times grandpa would bring home bags of apricots and nectarines from the guys selling them on the side of the road in Patterson, CA (the “apricot capital of the world”). Grandpa would split the fruit open and add salt if he thought they were too sweet. I like the addition of Tajín in this pie even though the flavor is not heavily pronounced. The speckled effect in the finished pie from the Tajin is nice and you could sprinkle more on top of the pie once it’s cooled, right before serving.
This pie is the result of me thinking “what if key lime pie but nectarines?” I love the texture of key lime pie, and wanted to see if I could replace key limes with pureed fruit in the way that people make mango pie with mango puree. Angela Davis, aka The Kitchenista has a beautiful roasted mango pie recipe on her blog; there are also videos of the pie on her Instagram. There are variations of mango pie that use cream cheese to add body to the pie filling, along with gelatin to help set things. Samin Nosrat has a lovely-looking mango pie recipe that uses gelatin as well. I knew right off the bat I didn’t want to use gelatin, however the texture of this pie is quite gelatinous anyway so the addition of gelatin would’ve made the filling too firm in my opinion.
This pie is a good way to use up any stone fruit that has been sitting in your fruit bowl for a while and you don’t want to make jam. The first time I made this pie I made a traditional pie dough, but for the official recipe I opted for pecan shortbread cookies. I used these. You can use pie dough, graham cracker, or any crumbly cookie for a cookie crust. I like the subtle hit of coconut in the crust from the coconut chips. If you’d like to use pie dough I highly recommend this recipe from Stella Parks of Serious Eats.
Depending on the size of your nectarines you may have leftover puree. For the pie filling you will be using 1 cup of the blended fruit. The leftovers can be spooned over ice cream, yogurt, or used in a smoothie. I used some as decoration on the pie because I wanted to do something other than whipped cream. Store the leftover puree in your fridge where it will keep, covered, for about 4 days if it lasts that long.
Feel free to use any stone fruit, or a combination of stone fruits, as long as you have the same amount in weight. I had apricots, nectarines, and plums so I used a combination of all three for the pie you see in this blog post. This is a refreshing pie that comes together pretty quickly. If you’d like to save even more time, you can omit roasting or grilling the fruit altogether. I really prefer to do this step though because I like enhancing the inherent flavor of the fruit.
In the coming weeks I will be working on a cookie edible recipe, but other than that I don’t expect to have time to develop and test another recipe this month. I have a really exciting opportunity to get my conchas out into the community through a partnership with a local Mexican food pop up restaurant. I helped out at one of their events earlier in the month and brought conchas as a gift to the chef and their partner. Imagine my utter delight and surprise when the chef texted me to say that if I want to, they’re more than happy to start selling my conchas at some of their events. So, that is what I have been and will continue to be working on. This will be a truly Atlanta concha as I will be using as many local to Georgia ingredients as absolutely possible — my flour, eggs, butter, and milk are all from local sources and I am extremely proud of that. I’ll be toying around with different grains and flours in the recipe (whole red wheat bread flour?? Corn flour maybe??) and of course bringing as much fun flavor to the topping. This opportunity opens up a whole new world for me and I’m grateful to become a part of the Atlanta pop up community.
Yield: one 9-inch pie
Prep time: about 15 minutes
Total bake time: a little more than 1 hour if roasting the fruit, 37-40 minutes if not roasting
10-12 pecan shortbread cookies (a total of about 9 ounces once crushed) or 9-inch pie crust
¼ cup coconut chips
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 medium-size nectarines (about 21 ounces), washed, halved, and pits removed
1 tablespoon Tajín, divided (optional)
4 eggs yolks
14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
zest and juice from 1 lime
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Heat oven to 325F.
Place cookies and coconut chips into a food processor and grind to fine crumbs. Transfer cookie/coconut mixture to a small bowl and pour in the melted butter. Stir to combine.
Pack cookie crust into a 9-inch pie plate. Use the flat bottom of a measuring cup to help pack the crust and up the sides of the pie plate. Do your best to make sure the crust is even on the bottom and the sides.
Parbake crust for 10 minutes. This just helps the crust to set before adding the filling.
While the crust cools, turn oven up to 375F.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the halved fruit on the baking sheet and sprinkle with ½ tablespoon Tajín (optional). Roast fruit until they’ve become softened and some of the juices have begun to release, about 25 minutes. Alternatively, if it’s too hot and you’d rather not turn on your oven, grill the fruit using a grill pan or outdoor grill if you have one. Grill the fruit until grill marks are present and the fruit has softened a bit. Whether roasting or grilling the fruit you’re just looking to deepen the flavor a bit, but this step is optional.
Set oven back to 325F if you roasted the fruit.
Transfer roasted or grilled fruit to a high-speed blender. Blend fruit until pureed, about 25 seconds. It’s fine if the mixture isn’t completely smooth, you can use a fine-mesh sieve to get a smoother consistency if you’d like.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks.
Add the sweetened condensed milk and whisk to combine with the egg yolks. Pour in 1 cup of the blended fruit puree, the remaining Tajín if using, zest and juice from the lime, and salt. Whisk to combine.
Pour mixture into cooled cookie crust and bake until the center of the pie is set and has a slight wiggle to it, about 27-30 minutes.
Let pie cool at room temperature and then wrap with plastic wrap once cool. Chill pie for at least 5 hours, but preferably overnight before slicing and serving.