Raspberry Pie Filling

This home-canned raspberry pie filling might be just about the most delicious, luxurious pie filling on the planet. It uses Clearjel.

Don’t have access to Clearjel? We’d recommend that you can the berries following the directions over at the National Center for canning raspberries (sweetened or unsweetened) and then at time of use, thicken with thickener of your choice (and sweeten as necessary if unsweetened) to turn a jar of them into pie filling.

This recipe comes from the Washington State University Extension Service.

The recipe

Jar size choices: Either half-litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz) OR 1 litre (US quart / 32 oz).

Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning

Yield: 1 litre (US quart) jar

Headspace: 3 cm (1 ¼ inch)

Processing time: Either size jar 30 minutes

You may also wish to make a few quarter-litre (½ US pint / 8 oz / 250 ml) jar sizes for use as topping for ice cream, etc.

This recipe is for a 1 litre (1 US quart) jar. You can multiply it if you wish, up to 7 (that is the usual suggested max, just because the standard canner will take a max of 7 x litre / quart jars at once.)

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Raspberry Pie Filling

Makes 1 batch (1 x 1 litre / 1 US quart) jar. Multiply by up to 7 if desired.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword Pie Filling, Raspberries

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 50 minutes minutes

Servings 1 litre jar (1 quart)

Calories 896kcal

Metric - US Customary

Ingredients

• 500 g raspberries (fresh. 1 lb / 3 ½ cups whole. Measured after prep with stems removed. )
• 5 tablespoons Clearjel (35 g / 1 ¼ oz)
• 175 g sugar (white. 6 oz / ¾ cup plus 2 tbsp)
• 250 ml water (cold. Or juice. 1 cup / 8 oz)
• 4 drops red food colouring (optional)
• 3 ½ teaspoons lemon juice (bottled)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

• Wash the raspberries.
• Place the fruit a batch or two at a time in boiling water. Let water return to the boil, then boil 1 minute. Get fruit out right away, and put in a covered bowl or pot to keep warm. Repeat until all fruit has been blanched.
• [Optional: press up to half the fruit through a sieve to reduce the number of seeds.]
• Put the Clearjel in a very large pot along with the sugar, if using sugar. Mix. Add water (or juice) and food colouring if using, and liquid stevia if using instead of sugar. Stir constantly over medium heat until mixture gets quite thick and begins to bubble. Add lemon juice, cook one additional minute. Fold in the berries carefully all at once just until evenly mixed.
• Fill piping hot mixture into hot jars.
• Ladle into ½ litre (1 US pint / 16 oz) jars or 1 litre (1 US quart / 32 oz) jars.
• Leave 3 cm (1 ¼ inch) headspace.
• Debubble well, adjust headspace.
• Wipe jar rims.
• Put lids on.
• Process in a water bath or steam canner.
• Process either size jar for 30 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.

Nutrition

Serving: 1g | Calories: 896kcal | Carbohydrates: 233.8g | Protein: 3.5g | Fat: 1.6g | Saturated Fat: 0.1g | Sodium: 16mg | Fiber: 10.1g | Sugar: 199.9g

Reference information

How to water bath process.

How to steam can.

When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.

More about the Clearjel Pie Fillings, including tips and tricks.

For stevia, Better Stevia liquid stevia was the stevia used.

More information about Sugar and Salt-Free Canning in general.

What is the shelf life of home canned goods?

Raspberry Pie Filling canned in 1 litre (US quart) Leifheit jar.

Raspberry Pie Filling canned in ½, ¾ and 1 litre jars (pint, ¾ quart and 1 quart) jars.

Recipe notes

• They want that little bit extra headspace in this recipe because the filling does expand a bit during processing.
• If you want to lighten up the calories, and save time when using to cook, try making your pie crust (or tart shells) with 3 or 4 sheets of filo pastry instead of short-crust pastry. Delicious!
• Don’t skip the blanching step with the fresh raspberries (see frozen exception below), it’s needed to both heat them and get some air out of them to help prevent the pie mixture bubbling up too much in the jars.
• For a better tasting pie, you can use some kind of berry or grape juice instead of the cold water.
• Bottled lemon juice is called for to get the assured acidity.
• Instead of the sugar, you could use the same volume amount of Splenda®, OR 2 teaspoons liquid stevia. If you are using liquid stevia, depending on how sweet your berries are and aren’t, and the taste buds of your crowd, you may want an extra half-teaspoon of liquid stevia per batch being made (won’t affect calories.)

Seeds

This can be very seedy, as you can see from the photos. Feel free to strain some, most or all of the seeds out. Volume yield will be less but if you’ve reached the stage in life where you are over raspberry seeds stuck in your teeth, it could be worth it.

If you strain out almost all the seeds, then halve all the other ingredients (except the lemon juice, which is there for safety to ensure sufficient acidity) because your volume will drop by about half.

No substitute for Clearjel

You can’t use flour or cornstarch etc., in this recipe, only Clearjel.

Pamela Schmutz at Clemson University explains:

The recipes for fruit pie fillings all use a modified food starch called Clear Jel®. This starch produces the correct thickening, even after the fillings are canned and baked. Other starches, such as cornstarch, break down and result in a runny filling. Clear Jel® must be used as the thickener in these recipes; there is no substitution. Do not use any other form of Clear Jel®, such as Instant Clear Jel®.” ^[1] Schmutz, Pamela. Pie Fillings. Georgia: Clemson University Extension. HGIC 3160. August 2010. Accessed August 2015.

Using Frozen Raspberries

If you have home-frozen raspberries, they won’t survive being thawed and then simmered for several minutes. Commercially-frozen ones might, but with home-frozen ones, you are more likely to end up with a raspberry syrup if you try. For a pie filling, you really need to end up with some chunky texture to give the pie filling some body, otherwise you might just as well tip a jar of raspberry jam into a pie shell.

The purpose of the blanching in the blueberry original version is to to release air from the berries to reduce headspace and venting issues in the jar, and to give a better storage life, as well as to create a hot pack out of the berries for canning.

After being thawed, though, raspberries’ flesh walls have collapsed, causing the release of air and juice the same as boiling would have. That leaves the second part — heating– to be addressed in a manner that doesn’t destroy the fragile, thawed fruit.

Consequently, we proceeded as follows, which we felt still meets the requirements of the developers of the recipe to both get rid of air and heat, while avoiding berry flavour and nutrition loss.

1. Berries should be frozen in unsweetened dry packs.
2. MEASURE BEFORE THAWING by volume or weight, your choice.
3. Thaw the raspberries completely in fridge, either overnight, or allow 8 to 10 hours (unsweetened fruit takes longer to thaw than sweetened fruit, according to the NCHFP.)
4. Separate the thawed fruit and its juice. To do this, put a sieve over a large jug such as a batter jug, or a large bowl. Empty thawed fruit and juice into the sieve, in batches if need be. Let most of the juice drain off (you’d never get it all off as it keeps on coming.)
5. Heat the fruit up in microwave in batches. Zap for three minutes on high, stir gently with a spatula, zap for another three minutes. If not piping hot, zap for a few more minutes. Cover while successive batches are heated.
6. Reduce Clearjel to 4 tablespoons per batch ^[2]So Easy to Preserve, 2014 edition, page 106 advises to reduce Clearjel to 4 tablespoons per batch when using frozen fruit.. Put Clearjel and sugar (if using sugar) in the pot. Add ALL the raspberry juice that was initially set aside. Top up with as much if any plain water needed to meet the liquid requirement.
7. Cook until partly-thickened.
8. Add the lemon juice (and liquid stevia if using instead of sugar.)
9. Add all the raspberries, including any further juice that has come off them.
10. Fold the fruit in carefully, and cook for another minute or two.
11. Proceed with canning.

Uses

This pie filling doesn’t have a lot of “body” to it, so slices of it as pie can be tricky to serve unless quite chilled. It does, however, make a great cheesecake topping, or a layer in a sponge cake or a chocolate raspberry torte. It also works great for squares or tarts. (A 1 litre (1 quart) jar yields 2 dozen x 2 ½ inch (7 cm) tarts. (Don’t overfill the tart shells or the filling will boil over.))

Raspberry tarts made from raspberry pie filling

Recipe source

• Washington State University Extension Service’s directions for adaptation of the USDA’s Blueberry Pie Filling into raspberry ^[3] Washington State University Chelan / Douglas / Okanogan County Extension. Let’s Preserve Fruit Pie Fillings. September 2010. Page 5.
• Their source was: Blueberry Pie Filling. In: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 2 – 27.

Modifications made:

• Add information on how to handle frozen.

Raspberry Pie Filling canned in ½ litre (US pint) jars

Nutrition information

With sugar, 966 calories per litre / quart jar. Sugar-free, nearly two-thirds fewer calories: 339.

Regular version

Per 1 x litre (US quart /32 oz) jar

• 996 calories, 16 mg sodium

Sugar-Free Version

Per 1 litre (US quart / 32 oz ) jar:

• 339 calories, 16 mg sodium

* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com

* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.

Raspberry Pie Filling canned in ¾ litre (¾ quart) jars from Bernardin.