Cranberry Custard Pie
A flaky cinnamon crust gives way to a beautifully creamy vanilla bean custard, topped with perfectly tart cranberries. This pie will be the hit of every holiday party from Thanksgiving to New Years!
Ingredients
Cinnamon Pie Crust
- 2 cups flour, all-purpose
- 2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ⅔ cup plus 2 tablespoon shortening
- 4-6 tbsp ice cold water
Cranberry Sauce
- 24 oz fresh or frozen cranberries
- 1 cup sugar
- Juice from 2 oranges
- Zest from 2 oranges
- 1 cinnamon stick
Custard
- ½ cup corn starch
- ½ cup milk (any kind)
- 8 egg yolks, room temperature
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 cups heavy cream
- 2 vanilla beans or 4 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
Instructions
Prepare the Custard.
- In a large bowl, mix together corn starch and milk until smooth (no lumps remaining). Add egg yolks and whisk to combine.
- Using a knife, slice open the vanilla beans length-wise, and scrape out the little seeds. Place the seeds in a large pot with the sugar and heavy cream.
- Heat the pot with the heavy cream over medium until just starting to bubble.
- Remove the pot from the stove, and VERY SLOWLY (a few tablespoon at a time) pour the heavy cream mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly and quickly.
- Once all of the heavy cream mixture is incorporated, pour everything back into the pot. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly. Be careful that the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Stir until your custard is quite thick (it should be a little bit thicker than cake batter). This takes different amounts of time depending on how hot your stove is, but it took me about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and pour into a mesh strainer over a large bowl.
- Chill in the fridge until completely cool, about an hour.
Make the Cranberry Sauce.
- Combine and stir all ingredients in a large pot.
- Heat over medium heat until cranberries are popped and the juices turn into a jam-like consistency.
- Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Put in fridge until completely cool, about an hour.
Prepare the Pie Crust.
- Combine flour, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl.
- Cut in shortening using a pastry blender, knife, or hands, until the largest pieces are about the size of hazelnuts.
- Sprinkle in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, moistening the flour with your hands or a fork. Gather into a ball. If the ball crumbles easily, continue adding 1 tablespoon of water at a time and working into the dough until no longer crumbly.
- Flour a large board or countertop. On the floured surface, roll dough out into about a 12 inch circle or until about ⅛ of an inch thick. Every so often, use a pastry scraper or a knife to lift up the dough and sprinkle flour underneath to keep the dough from sticking to the surface.
- Using the rolling pin, transfer the dough to the pan (roll the dough up onto the rolling pin, then move to the pan and unroll).
- Trim the crust at the top edge of the pan, and if desired, decorate edges of crust. I like to crimp the edges by pressing one side of the crust with my thumb and pointer finger, and the other with the thumb of my other hand. I work my way around the whole crust until it is all crimped.
- Refrigerate the prepared crust for 30 minutes (this part is necessary, otherwise your crust will fall while in the oven).
- Preheat the oven to 425.
- Poke the bottom of the pie crust with a fork about 10 times. Line pie crust with foil, and put pie weights onto the foil (you can also use dry beans or coins). Bake the pie crust at 425 for 10 minutes, then remove weights and foil. Bake for another 5 minutes.
- Let rest on the counter until cool.
Put It All Together.
- Preheat oven to 375.
- Once everything is completely cooled, put the custard filling into the bottom of the pie crust and smooth. Put the cranberry sauce on top of the custard filling and smooth.
- Place pie in preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes. If the crust starts to brown too much, you can put a ring of foil over it.
- Remove pie from oven and cool completely, preferably in the fridge for at least 4 hours before serving. Note that if you serve it before cooling it completely, the custard will be a little mushy. Still delicious, but mushy.
- If you want to decorate the pie similarly to how I have in my pictures, use the whipped cream and sugared cranberry recipes on my site!
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!