I have a confession: I prefer pie to cake.

I know, I know. Cakes are prettier, and they usually feed more people, and they are definitely a much better vehicle for rainbow sprinkles. And ice cream cake is obviously amazing. But there’s just something about a piece of key lime pie, or cherry pie with vanilla ice cream, or pecan pie with whipped cream… which is why I decided to bake myself a pie for my birthday.

Raspberry pie is one of my favorites, and I don’t see it very often. This recipe is the same one my mom baked for me on my 20th birthday, when we were living in Belgium (I don’t like European cakes). It was fantastic then, and I think she has baked it a few times since, but I’ve never made it myself.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention while I was putting the filling together… which I realized when we started eating the pie. It was delicious and full of raspberry flavor, but it made my tongue tingle. Why, you ask? Because I used cayenne instead of cinnamon.

Oh well. It was still great with vanilla bean ice cream.

Raspberry pie (Makes 1 pie)

1/4 cup tapioca (you can usually find this in a small box in the baking aisle)
1 cup sour cream (don’t be scared of this!)
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 cups fresh raspberries (2 pints, or 4 small packages)
1 unbaked pie crust (the frozen Marie Callender’s crusts are good if you don’t want to make your own)

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Stir the tapioca together with the sour cream in a large bowl. In a small bowl, stir the sugar together with the cinnamon and salt. Add the sugar mixture to the sour cream mixture and stir to combine. Rinse and pick through the raspberries, then carefully stir or fold them into the sour cream mixture.

Set the pie filling aside while you grease a deep-dish pie plate and arrange the pie crust in it. Stir the pie filling once more and then pour into the prepared pie crust, using the spoon to spread it out evenly if necessary.

Bake on the bottom rack of the oven for 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and place a pie guard or aluminum foil around the edges of the pie crust (I forgot to do this, hence my over-baked crust). Put the pie back in the oven on the top rack and bake for another 25-30 minutes, until the filling is bubbly.

Carefully remove the pie card or pull back the foil to ensure the crust is golden brown (if it’s not, you can keep the pie in the oven for a few more minutes, on the top rack).

Allow the pie to cool for an hour before serving (with vanilla ice cream, if you have it). Store uneaten pie in the fridge and eat it for breakfast.