Hurry up! It’s there! The gooseberry season is here, so make the most of it, as it won’t last long. Those pretty green or red berries make up this delicious gooseberry pie recipe. Topped with some meringue it’s the perfect summer treat.

Now for this gooseberry pie I used red gooseberries as you can see. The green gooseberries are less ripe than the red ones and are somewhat more tart. You can also use those if you want. Make sure to taste the filling to see if it is not too tart.

Gooseberry pie

First of all you need to make the dough for the gooseberry pie. I used a recipe for ‘vlaai’ which is a traditional Dutch pie. If you want you can substitute this for shortcrust pastry or another pie crust recipe you like. Or try this one. It’s a yeasted dough so slightly different. Similar to the dough I used in this “rijstevlaai” (Dutch rice pie)

Anyway, for making the dough you place milk and butter into a medium saucepan on medium heat until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat and stir the yeast in. Make sure it is mixed well. Let it stand for a few minutes and then add the rest of the dough ingredients and mix it into a smooth dough.

Form into a ball and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise for an hour.

Work on the filling

While the dough is doing it’s thing, it’s time to work on the gooseberry filling. For that you need about 650 grams of gooseberries. Add them in a pan together with juice of 1 orange (blood orange or normal orange) and the sugar. If you like your pie to be sweet you can add more sugar. How much sugar is your decision. You can also use brown sugar but the color will be slightly different. Also keep in mind that the meringue is also sweet so depending on how much meringue you’re using you can add more sugar or less.

Mix the cornstarch with a little bit of water to a smooth paste.

When the gooseberries are soft and broken you add the cornstarch (or replace with tapioca starch). The mixture will become thick and jam-like. If it gets too thick you can add a bit of water but since it’s a pie filling you don’t want it to be too thin.

Preparing the mold

Now it’s time to prepare the tart tin. I used a closed one of around 20 cm (8-9 inches) with cute little edges but you can use any other kind of tart tin or pie dish you want.

Place the dough on a lightly floured kitchen counter and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough. Place it inside the tart tin and trim of the edges if any are hanging over. You can also make a lattice top if you want or just keep it open like I did here. I do like a top crust but I wanted to be able to see the gooseberries.

Once the dough is inside of the tin you let it rise for another half hour.

Adding the filling

Preheat the oven to 200˚C (400 degrees F) and after half an hour add the gooseberry filling to the tin and bake for about 25 to 30 minutes or until golden and cooked through. Let it cool in the tin for a bit before taking it out of the form and let it cool down on a wire rack.

Making the meringue

Now this gooseberry pie has a lovely meringue topping. You can cover the entire pie, but that would be a shame since you loose sight of the gooseberries. So I went with a ring of meringue around the edges. But again, it’s up to you what you like.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and place in a piping bag. Make nice tufts around the outside of the pie. Leaving the middle open.

Using a creme brulee burner brown some of the edges of the meringue. You can also do this in the oven but stay with it. It can go rather fast.

You can use both fresh gooseberries or cans of gooseberries. (never seen those here in the Netherlands though!)

Additions and variations

Now in terms of pie recipes this is a pretty good one. The fun part is that you can fill the pie with any kind of fruit you like. Make it an apple pie if you want to (but why would you want to if you can get your hands on gooseberries?) Over where I live there are no gooseberry bushes but if you can get your hands on wild gooseberries, I’m sure that would be awesome too.

In terms of flavor the filling is simple but if you want you can add some vanilla extract and if you have leftover dough you can make a top pastry with one of those intricate lattice works. I don’t have the patience to do that but it does look pretty good. I like mine to have just the bottom crust. If you do make the top part with pastry as well make sure to use egg yolks to brush the pastry before placing in the oven.

Serving the pie is also delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or some sweet whipping cream.