Shoo-Fly Pie

This recipe is reported to be sufficient for three 7" pies. We made one 7" pie, adjusting measures proportionately.

Preheat your oven to 350^oF.

Arrange your pie dough into a 7-inch pie plate. Ideally, you should probably have a bit of wavy crust standing above the edge of the plate to hold things in.

Mix the molasses with the boiling water. Once combined, let it cool slightly and then add the soda.

While the boiling watery molasses is cooling, mix the flour, brown sugar and shortening into crumbs. Crumbs is generous - mix the three ingredients into a slightly less powdery mix than flour and brown sugar are on their own.

Pour the molasses mixture into the prepared pie crust. Note that it is basically liquid, so moving the whole thing around is a bit treacherous, threatening to splash runny molasses all over your kitchen. Follow the molasses with the crumbs, basically dumping the "crumble" on top of the liquid.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 400^oF.

Arrange your pie dough into a 9-inch pie plate. Here again, you should probably have a bit of wavy crust standing above the edge of the plate to hold the "crumble" in.

Combine the dry ingredients with shortening, as you would do with a pastry dough. Note how there isn't enough shortening for it to come together into anything short of slightly dampened spices and flour, but apparently still referred to as "crumbs."

Dissolve the baking soda into the boiling water. Then mix in the molasses. Let the mixture cool for long enough so that when you add the beaten egg yolk, it doesn't immediately solidify. Then mix in the beaten yolk.

Pour the molasses mixture into a 9” unbaked pie shell. Top the liquid layer with crumbs.

Bake at 400 degrees F until crust starts to brown. Reduce oven heat to 325oF and bake until pie is firm.