I’ve done a couple of posts on pies, but I was making one this weekend and decided to show making filling from fresh berries. I used fresh blueberries for this one, but you can use can use any combination of blueberries, strawberries, gooseberries, and raspberries.

Image shows a pie with four crescent moon cutouts.
Fresh from the oven.

When making a fruit pie, you can cook the filling first or you can just use as is. Fresh fruit can vary in it’s level of juiciness, and cooking the fruit lets you control the thickness of your filling better. I tend to just use the fruit without cooking because it takes less time to prepare.

Fresh berry filling for pie

  • 4 cups of fresh berries
  • 2/3 to 1 cup of sugar
  • 1/4 to 1/3 cup of flour
  • Lemon zest

That’s it!

Okay, it does take a little fiddling to get the quantities right. For sweeter berries, use less sugar. For gooseberries, use a whole cup.

Sugar, Flour and Spices

I use 1/3 cup of flour most times, and could have used another tablespoon or so for this pie. I didn’t have a lemon, so I sprinkled a teaspoon of lemon juice over the berries.

Mix your dry ingredients together. I also added 1/8 th teaspoon each of nutmeg and cloves to the mixture. (I’ve done this with blueberry jam, and it adds another layer of flavor)

Gently toss the dry ingredients with the berries and let stand while you make the pie crust. My pie crust recipe is in this post.

Once the crust is ready, add the filling, and cover it with a top crust.

When you bake a pie with fresh fruit, it takes a while. I protect the edges of my crust with a pie crust shield. They make some nice ones now that are adjustable so that you can use them with different sized pies.

This recipe bakes at 375 for 25 minutes with the edge covered, then 20-25 minutes more, until golden brown on top.