Ingredients
- Walnut Crumb Topping
- 3/4 cup (3 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup packed (5 3/4 ounces) brown sugar
- 3/4 cup (3 ounces) raw walnuts, coarsely chopped
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, melted
- Fruit Filling
- 1 cup (5 1/2 ounces) dried figs
- 4 small apples, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/2 inch thick (12 ounces prepped)
- 4 pears, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/2 inch thick (1 1/4 pounds prepped)
- 1 cup (4 ounces) cranberries, fresh or frozen
- 1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
Preparation
Step 1
Lightly butter the sides and bottom of a 9 or 10 inch springform pan. Either make the piecrust linked to above, your own or grab that Pillsbury box. Ain’t no shame! Whichever you do, when the piecrust is ready to roll out (the book recommended rolling out to a 14-inch disk at least) or unroll, place it in the pan, making sure to gently press the crust into the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Your crust needs to come pretty much to the top of the sides. If you need to, you can do what we did and “Frankenstein” your crust. Ours did not reach the top, so we unrolled a Pillsbury crust and pressed pieces of it into the original crust where there were big gaps between the crust and the top of the pan. This ended up working just fine for us. Trim off any dough that hangs over the edges of the pan. Chill for an additional 30 minutes while you prepare the crumb topping and the fruit filling.
To make the walnut crumb topping, mix the flour, brown sugar, walnuts, cinnamon, and salt together in a bowl. Stir in the butter, then work it in with your hands until the texture of crumbs. We found that the more we worked it, the more it seemed to just want to pack down into a big lump. Put the topping in the refrigerator while you make the fruit filling. Don’t worry, just fluff it all up with a fork when you need to use it, carefully so you don’t end up flinging it all out of the bowl – speaking from experience.
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F.
To make the fruit filling, remove the stem from each fig (ours didn’t have any, yay), then boil the figs in 1 cup of water for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside until cool enough to handle.
Slice each fig into 4 to 5 pieces, put them in a large bowl, and add the apples, pears, and cranberries. Separately, mix the sugar and cornstarch together, then add to the fruit and gently toss until evenly coated.
Transfer the filling to the pie shell and top with the walnut crumb. Bake in the lower third of the oven for 60 to 75 minutes, or until the crumb is golden, the fruit juices are bubbling thickly around the edges, and the fruit is tender when pierced with a wooden skewer. If the crumb is getting too dark, cover it with foil (we had to do this about fifteen minutes prior to it being done).
Let the pie cool for a good while. We cut into ours about an hour or so after taking it from the oven, and it really could have used longer to cool down. The middle was stubborn (and still pretty hot) and wanted to fall apart on us as we removed slices, so I recommend a good hour and a half to two hours to cool own. Then either serve or cover loosely with some foil until ready to eat. Or if you’re serving this at a nice dinner like Thanksgiving, proudly display it on a cake plate. It’ll be fine out for a few hours and tastes good at room temperature anyway. To store, you can leave this one on the counter, covered well, for a couple of days.
Notes:
Since you’re using pears in this one keep in mind that they might need some time to ripen after buying them from the store. I confess (We seem to confess many a cooking sin here, don’t we?) that ours may have been a little under-ripened, but they ended up doing well enough for the pie. Still, you don’t want to have to use a rock hard pear if you don’t need to.
Again, that piecrust – maybe you have a family recipe that’s tried and true. Use it! I have to admit, I’ll be using a ready-made crust or two out of the box. Hey, it’s for Thanksgiving and if we can save some time, might as well, right? I’ll save to piecrust experimenting for days when I have more time. Plus, really, the Pillsbury crusts taste great!
The figs: I wasn’t sure what to expect from the figs. You know, I think they might be an acquired taste. I wasn’t as thrilled with them as the other fruit, I admit. I think maybe one reason was that even cut up as they were, they were still kind of chunky. Next time I’m going to cut them into smaller pieces. Biting into the big chunks was part of my problem, I think. Too much fig at one time. If you don’t like figs, I recommend using either one more pear or apple instead, ,maybe even a few more cranberries. Those were delicious!
The apples: The recipe calls for 4 small apples, but the day I went, much of the fruit looked pretty poor. I ended up buying to very large Honeycrisp apples, about 3-4 inches in diameter) and those were plenty.