Gramma Brown’s Rhubarb Pie

I like rhubarb pie. I like to add strawberries to my rhubarb pie. I like ice cream with a piece of still-warm pie. And, this is the time of year when the rhubarb and strawberries are fresh from the garden. It doesn’t get much better. I just finished making a pie using Melanie in IA’s recipe from her Gramma Brown. It turns out a superb and always reliably delicious custard pie. Earlier in the day I went to the raspberry bushes along the tree line at the back yard and picked a quart of black raspberries. Some of them are in the pie, too. Doesn’t it look good?

I have a single rhubarb plant in this little terrace on the south side of the house. There have been two harvests this year. A third will likely come in a month. Then, it dries up.Shown below, I cut the dozen or so large stalks and remove the leaves.

I always leave some small stalks and shoots. They appreciate some water to help them survive the lack of shade from the large leaves that have been removed.

The stalks get taken to the sink for a good wash. Most people would then cut them up into thin slices with a knife. I have a better way. The food processor does that job perfectly. The 1/16″ cutting blade is just right. Several stalks can be fed at a time. It is a big machine. But, it still takes two batches to get them all cut. See below.

The slices come out sometimes still adhering to each other. A couple of those stack is show below. The dozen or so sliced stalks will fill three 3 cup Glad storage containers. For this pie I used slices equal to one of those Glad containers.

The recipes says to prepare the pie crust and line a pie pan. I just buy them ready made two to a box. They fit almost perfectly. The slight excess I cut off with a knife. You can see two rolled up wads in the pan. I later roll them into long flat strips and place them on the pie before baking it.

The sliced rhubarb is placed into a bowl with a third of a cup of sugar to sweeten. I also prepared the strawberries and freshly picked raspberries on the side. The three are mixed together. A mixture of 2 eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and 4 tbs of flour get stirred together and added to the fruit mix. All of that gets poured into the prepared pie crust.

Here is the pie ready to be placed in the 425˚ oven for 30 minutes. Note the X on top from the two small leftover bits of crust.

And now for the best part. Pie with a little ice cream on a summer evening. Delicious. I wish you could taste it.

If you want to try this recipe yourself, here is a copy for you. Try some variations like I did. Gramma Brown would be pleased. She is no longer with us. But her pie lives on. Thank you, Melanie, for saving it and sharing it. It is a wonderful treat.