Do you remember this sad sight? Well, I mentioned my poor pie crust making skills to the mother-in-law (she had given me a beautiful pie plate for my birthday). She responded, admitting to her own meager pie-crust beginnings, wherein she admitted to approaching her mother-in-law for her recipe. Then, she offered to hand down Grandma’s recipe to me, which I gladly accepted.

When I saw her at brunch yesterday, she gave me the recipe. I had pictured an age-old 3×5 recipe card, stained with shortening and specks of flour, displaying the signs of having been referred to over and over again. But rather than that she handed me a book, Great Pies and Tarts, by Carole Walter. In the book a page was flagged with a pie crust recipe from the 1930s. Brilliant! I had envisioned this family recipe, perhaps a secret one, being handed to me to care for and such and instead I received a new book from Borders. Apparently the original book the mother-in-law was looking for by Walter was no longer being published, but this one had the pie crust recipes which is really what mattered.

The cookbook, by the way, is so much fun to read. Especially as we approach another dessert-less week (remember, the husband and I are cutting back on the processed foods/desserts). I read it like a coffee table book or a magazine. Flip through it, find a fun recipe, read the the story behind it, salivate salivate salivate.

So, after a day of doing this it should come to no surprise that I felt the need to experiment in the kitchen a bit tonight. I had some frozen berries I had thawed (intended to have them for lunch but didn’t) and a dream of a berry crisp. I found a three-berry crisp recipe from Walter and just sort of went with it.

In a small ramekin, I sprinkled the thawed berries (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries) with some sugar and corn starch. Crumbled on top, a mixture of whole wheat flour, melted butter, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon. Then some chocolate chips on top. Baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes (until the berries were bubbly).

Fun and sweet. And tart. I probably could have used a little bit more sugar in the berries, though the chocolate chips were a sweet surprise in each bite.

So long for a dessert-less week. On the other hand, this was a cheaper, homemade alternative. Hard to beat that.