The worst blackberry pie ever

I cringe to even write this post as I already have a hit or miss reputation in the kitchen.  Some of you have experienced me at my finest and my lowest (GW, no comments about the 2007 rigatoni with steak sauce incident please!) But I spent a LOT of time on this damn pie, and took tons of pictures in anticipation of it being my first food-related blog post... so, here goes.

My husband LOVES blackberries.  I used to despise them as I thought they tasted like soap.  But I've grown to appreciate them over the years and now even prefer them to raspberries.  I had slapped together a blackberry galette for Fathers Day, which came out quite nicely (if I do say so myself).  Granted, it had about 3 ingredients and the recipe was about 4 steps long.  But I was inspired nonetheless.  I decided it was time to bake me a bonafide pie!

Disclaimer (i.e. Pathetic Excuse) #1: The original recipe is for rhubarb pie, not blackberry.  Therein probably lies the rub.

Disclaimer (i.e. Pathetic Excuse) #2: I've always mistrusted the oven in our apartment.  Things always take longer to bake in it than it should, so I believe it runs cooler than the set temperature.  I however did not do anything to compensate for this hunch.

Disclaimer (i.e. Pathetic Excuse) #3: The cornstarch in the cupboard was REALLY old.  It was from my husband's bachelor days, old.

Disclaimer (i.e. Pathetic Excuse) #4: This is the first fruit pie I've ever attempted.

The recipe (from Williams-Sonoma's The Weeknight Cook):

I started out by using the leftover flaky pastry dough I'd used for the galette I made a week prior for Father's Day (the recipe for the dough yields 2 discs), and tossed the berries in sugar.

The first sign, here, should have been the egregious imbalance of sugar to berry ratio.  Again, this was my first pie and all, but it seemed like a LOT of excess sugar for the amount of filling. 
 

Next, I set the dough in the pie dish and filled with the filling & cornstarch mixture.

A stick of butter for the crumbly topping.  Yes, a whole stick. :)

This is what it looked like just before I stuck in the oven:

And after baking it for the maximum time plus 5 minutes because the topping still didn't look brown enough for me, I pulled it out.  It LOOKED great!

But I soon realized it was a soupy mess on the inside.  Not sure if it was because the cornstarch was too old and didn't properly thicken the sauce.  Or if there was just too much sugar and the water content of blackberries is so different from rhubarb that it just didn't work.  The world will never know.

After eating my obligatory "taste" sliver of a slice, I also put a slice in front of my husband after he ate dinner that night.  Like the good husband he is, he took 3 whole sugary soupy bites and forced them down.  The rest of that slice, and the whole pie, was for the birds.