Muscadine Pie
Muscadine pie is a fruit filled dessert pie made with purple muscadines or golden scuppernongs (or both!). The taste is a cross between a sour cherry and blackberry pie. The texture is similar to a cherry, but thicker. Sweet, tart, and wonderfully delicious!
Muscadine Pie
Ingredients
For the Crust
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup salted butter, really cold or frozen
- 1 cup full fat sour cream
For the Filling
- 6 cups muscadine or scuppernong grapes
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp butter
Egg Wash
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp milk
Instructions
To make the pie crust
- In a large bowl, add the flour, salt, sugar and whisk together.
- Grate the butter over the bowl, and gently mix together with the flour. Make sure all the butter has been coated with flour.
- Add the sour cream and mix until dough comes together. It should feel sticky but not unmanageable.
- Divide the dough into two sections and pat down into a round. You can go ahead and roll out the bottom crust now and add it to the pie pan. Refrigerate while the filling is being made.
For the filling
- In a small bowl, whisk together the sugar, salt and flour
- In a medium saucepan, squeeze the muscadines and drop the pulp into the pan. Add the hulls to a medium size bowl. Add 1/4 cup water to the pan with the pulp and turn to medium heat. Cook the pulp about 5 minutes or so, mashing with a potato masher to extract the juice. Put the cooked pulp into a sieve over the bowl of hulls, and squeeze as much of the juice as possible through.
- Put the hulls and juice mixture into the saucepan and cook for about another 5 minutes or so to soften the hulls. Add the sugar mixture and mix together and cook for another minute at a low boil. You'll see the mixture thicken quickly. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
Assemble the pie
- Remove the pie pan from the fridge and add the filling. Dot the top with the butter, cut into small slivers. Roll out the top pie crust and place on top, seal the edges and cut vents in the top. Brush with an egg wash. If desired, you can also do a lattice top pie crust.
- Bake for 10 minutes at 400 then reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 30-50 minutes until pie crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling up.
- Remove from oven and let cool completely. If you slice into it while the pie is still warm, the pie will be a bit runny. It sets up as it cools.
Where to find muscadines
Gather round today friends, it’s fall in the Deep South and we celebrate by making a little known specialty: Muscadine Pie. If you aren’t from the South, and even if you are-you might be asking what are muscadines? They’re a variety of grape with a thick skin (hull) and a juicy seedy interior (pulp). They range from sweet to sour and delightfully tangy. They are native to the southern region of the United States.
Around here we pick our grapes right from the vines growing wild around the farm, but you can also find these at your local fruit and veggie stand, farmer’s market, and I even found some at Aldi a few weeks ago. They’re great for making jelly, wine, and pie!
Let’s get to baking!
Here’s what you’ll need to make this muscadine pie:
For the crust: all purpose flour, butter, sugar, salt, and full fat sour cream.
For the filling: 6 cups of muscadine or scuppernong grapes, flour, sugar, salt, water, butter, and lemon juice (maybe-depending if your grapes are sour or sweet).
About the pie crust
We’re using my favorite made from scratch pie crust, but you can substitute this with your favorite recipe, or with store bought crust. If using store bought, my favorite is the Pillsbury deep dish pie crust that are in the freezer section.
Tools you may need
Small and medium bowls, saucepan, and pie plate
How do I make it?
First, we prepare the pie crusts: grab your all purpose flour, salt, sugar, butter, and sour cream. If you need a full photo tutorial, click here to check out my sour cream pie crust.
I like to make my pie crusts first and have these chilling in the fridge before making the filling.
- Add flour, salt and sugar to a medium bowl and whisk together. Grate the first stick of butter in. Mix together gently with a fork and make sure all the butter pieces are coated with flour. Then grate in the second stick of butter. Mix gently, and add in the sour cream and stir together.
- The dough will look rough and shaggy and like it isn’t coming together. Use your hands to quickly mash the dough into a ball. The pieces should start to combine and stick together. If they don’t, you can add a spoonful of sour cream at a time until the dough starts to form a ball.
- Don’t add too much sour cream here, just enough that the dough comes together without being overly sticky or wet. If you add too much sour cream, it will bake up with a gummy texture instead of flaky.
- Once the dough forms a ball, divide the dough in half for the top and bottom crust. Roll out the bottom crust now and place it into your pie dish, then put it in the fridge to chill. Take the second half and pat the dough down into a disc, and wrap in plastic wrap and chill until time to top the pie.
To make the filling:
In a small bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour and salt.
Next we need to separate the hulls and pulp. To do this, we squeeze the muscadines until they pop and the hulls slide out. If you’re having a hard time with this, use a knife to pierce the hull, then squeeze. Squeeze the pulps into a saucepan and add the hulls into a bowl and set those aside.
Add about 1/4 cup of water, and cook the pulp until soft and shiny, about 5 minutes. I mash them down with a potato masher to get as much as the juice extracted as possible while they’re cooking.
Once they’re done, place the juice mixture in a mesh sieve over the bowl of hulls and press down with a spoon to get as much of the juice as you can into the bowl.
Put the hulls and juice into the saucepan and cook for another 5 minutes or so until the hulls soften. Add the sugar mixture and the lemon juice to the pan and boil for a minute until the mixture begins to thicken.
Remove from heat and let the filling cool for a few minutes.
Next it’s time to pour the filling into the pie pan. Cut up the 1 tbsp of butter into small pieces and dot the top of the filling. (I forget to do this sometimes, so I don’t have a picture of the butter step.)
Roll out the top crust for the pie. You can make a lattice crust, or cover the whole pie and cut vents in the top, whichever you like. Seal and flute the edges, add egg wash if desired. You can put the pie in the fridge now if you want to bake later, or go ahead and bake.
Bake for 10 minutes at 400, then turn the heat down to 350 and continue to bake for another 30-50 minutes (depending on your oven.) The crust should be golden brown and you should see the pie filling juices boiling up through the vents or lattice crust.
What to do with extra muscadines…
Try my Muscadine Jelly recipe next!
