How I managed to get his far into the summer without making a blackberry pie I don’t really know. I found some gorgeous berries at – please don’t stone me – the supermarket for $1.99/basket and I was thinking of making a sour cream berry pie.
So I have this pie in the back of my mind as I’m trolling the Cloverfield Farmers Market and come upon Spring Hill Cheese Co. from Petaluma. Spring Hill makes estate cheese products and butter, meaning that all the products are made from milk from the Jersey Cows who graze grass on the property.
Brian, the gentleman working the booth offered me a slice of peach with some lemon quark on it. Absolutely delicious. Quark is the German version of a fresh cheese like cream cheese or mascarpone. The lemon flavored cheese was super smooth with a good balance of sweet to tart. So now the berry pie was going to be made with lemon quark instead of sour cream. But it was the butter that really caught my eye. Very yellow and very dense it seemed a good candidate for pie dough. The color is natural and comes from the milk which is a reflection of all the good grasses the cows eat. It is 85% butterfat which means that only 15% is moisture. That’s pretty much as close to moisture free as I’ve heard. What that means is your crust will have that super crispy flake that normally only comes from lard.
I think all the elements came together in this pie like a dream, maybe the best yet of this project. Who knows if it’s possible to repeat it, but I’m sure going to try.
And about the butter, all I have to say is in your zeal to get some of the yellow goodness, try to leave me some.
Check out this photo. The top is Land-o-lakes butter with coconut oil. The bottom is Spring Hill butter. The color difference says it all.