Growing up in Chicago, Rebecca Freeman first cooked and baked with her Italian grandmother. At an early age, she decided to tackle a bûche de noël as a baking project, and the satisfaction she received from that experience hooked her. She graduated with a Culinary Arts degree from Kendall College in Chicago and staged at restaurants there including Alinea. Rebecca came to Santa Fe in 2012 for what was to be a three-day visit with her sister. While in town, she landed a job at Geronimo and never went back. She also worked as a pastry chef at Compound restaurant and later at The Club at Las Campanas. In 2023, Rebecca was honored as the American Culinary Federation’s National Pastry Chef of the Year. These days, she’s Executive Pastry Chef for both Coyote Café and Santacafé.
Huckleberry-Merlot Pie Recipe
Rebecca loves making pies at home and always bakes a fruit-filled one for her husband’s birthday. She chose to flavor her huckleberry pie with merlot wine for its red fruit-forward notes. Judges especially complimented the pie’s “magnificent” butter crust.
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Rebecca Freeman’s Huckleberry-Merlot Pie
- Yield: Makes a 9-inch pie 1x
Ingredients
For the Pie Filling:
- 4 generous cups frozen huckleberries
- 1 tablespoon plus ½ teaspoon tapioca starch
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup Decoy Merlot, or other merlot wine
- 1½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- ½ tsp ground allspice
- 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
- Pinch salt
For the Pie Crust:
- 3½ cups (450 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1 cup butter, chilled and cubed
- ½ cup ice water
Instructions
For the Pie Filling:
- In a large saucepan, combine the ingredients. On low heat, bring mixture to a simmer. The mixture should be thick and glossy.
- Remove from heat and cool completely. Reserve.
For the Pie Crust:
- Combine flour, sugar, salt, and butter in a food processor, pulsing a few times. Once butter is pea-sized, slowly incorporate the ice water. Pulse until a dough ball forms. Pat dough out into 2 fat disks and wrap in plastic. Chill for one hour.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Roll out one dough disk on a floured surface into a round about an inch larger than a 9-inch pie plate. Arrange the crust in the pie plate, avoiding stretching it.
- Spoon in cooled huckleberry filling.
- Roll out the second crust and cut it into lattice or other decorative pattern.
- Bake for 45-60 minutes, until crust is golden. Cool completely before cutting.
Recipe by Rebecca Freeman
Story by Cheryl Alters Jamison
Photography by Tira Howard
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