World of WarCrafts: Very Berry Pie
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You can get pie all over Azeroth. From vendors; as quest rewards -- heck even mages are getting in on the action. Today's pie however, is a very special pie. Full of berry goodness and with a crumb topping to die for, the Very Berry pie is only available in one location -- from a pie vendor named Chris Moller who lives in Gilneas. Being a Gilnean citizen, vendor Moller is not long for this world, and his delicious treats are only obtainable for a limited time by low-level worgen players.
So you've got two choices, haven't you? You can level up a worgen, run them through Gilneas and buy a few stacks of these Very Berry Pies for your character, or you can simply hop to the kitchen and whip up one of these on your own time, without having to worry about impending forsaken invasions or rabid furry intruders. This recipe is intermediate level, though it does include a heroic mode that will leave some chefs shaking in their boots -- homemade pie crust, from scratch. Don't worry, even hard modes become trivial once you know the trick to beating them! So let's head to the kitchen after the break and get started, shall we?
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Very Berry Pie
Item Level 15
Use: Restores 61 health over 18 sec. Must remain seated while eating.
Sold by Chris Moller in Gilneas City for 29 copper.
"Berries are dripping off the sides it's so stuffed!"
The mats
Filling:
5-6 c. blueberries, fresh or frozen (If frozen, thaw and drain excess juice off before using)
3/4 c. sugar
1/3 c. flour
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tbs. corn starch
1 large bowl to hold it all!
Topping:
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. brown sugar
3 tbs. butter
1 small bowl
Crust (normal difficulty):
1 9" store-bought pie crust, any brand
The strat
On normal difficulty, this boss is an absolute pushover. Let's begin!
Ready Check Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. You want it hot when you're done combining the boss and the adds.
Raid Composition Have your main tank handle the berries, and your off tank fend off the crust nearby. Assign a small group of DPS and one healer to the topping adds, they don't require any heavy tanking.
Send in the main tank and DPS to mix the sugar, flour and corn starch in the large bowl.
Elementary Next, get your mages to kite the berries and the lemon juice into the mix. Combine into a gooey mess.
Double Dragon While your main group works with the mix, have that secondary DPS group combine the flour and brown sugar in a separate bowl. Get your rogues to cut in the butter until you've got a crumbly mess!
I Can't Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I am Time for the raid group to pull it together! Get the off tank to bring the crust to the raid, have the main tank place the berry mix into the crust. Get your DPS to sprinkle all those crumbs over the top of the pie, covering the berries.
The Abyss Will Gaze Back Into You Get that boss into the oven! Bake for 40 minutes, and be careful! If the boss enrages, it may bubble over -- place a cookie sheet in the oven just to catch any spills before they happen. Keep a close eye on the boss, you definitely don't want this one to burn!
Heroic Difficulty
Some find that for ease and sanity's sake, store-bought pie crust is the way to go. Adventurers wanting to try their hand at heroic mode however will be rewarded with the flakiest, tastiest pie crust they have ever set their teeth into!
The mats
1 1/4 c. flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter
1/4 c. water
1 sheet of plastic wrap
Either a food processor, or a pastry cutter and a large bowl.
1 9" pie pan
Rolling pin
Flour
Stay Chill Heroic mode is made dead easy if you remember one very simple step: Everything must remain cold. Before starting this encounter, put your flour in the freezer for a few hours. The 1/4 c. of water? Put that in the freezer too -- don't let it freeze, but you want it to be cold. The butter? Straight from the freezer, into the food processor or bowl. Do not thaw it. Make sure you are using unsalted butter -- using salted butter will give you a pie crust that tastes like a saltine cracker. Ew!
Phase one
Put your flour, your salt, and your butter into the food processor or bowl -- make sure you chunk up the butter a little before adding it to the mix. Because you are dealing with frozen butter, the food processor is the easier way to go, however you can achieve the same effect with a little muscle and a pastry cutter.
Have your dps cut in the butter with the flour and salt until you are left with coarse crumbs. Do this quickly -- the enrage timer hits if the butter melts, and you want that butter to remain cold.
Have a shaman very, very slowly trickle a little Healing Rain into the bowl or the food processor -- just a little at a time here! Continue cutting in the water until you're left with little pebbles of flour, butter and water. It should look like coarse cornmeal in texture, and it should stick together when you pinch it between your fingers. If it sticks to your fingers, dock your shaman 50 dkp and try again, as this means they added too much water. Bad shaman!
Place the crumb mix on the plastic wrap and bundle it into a ball, squeezing it into a compact mass. Stick it in the fridge for at least one hour, longer for better results.
Keep in mind the enrage timer is very tight for heroic mode, the longer you take to perform the steps, the more the butter melts. If the butter melts, you lose the encounter and have to wipe and start all over again.
Phase two
When you're ready to continue with phase two, pull your ball of dough out of the fridge and let it sit for a minute. Spread a little flour over a flat surface -- a cutting board will do if you don't have a sheet for such things. That flour on your flat surface is there so the dough doesn't stick to it when you perform the next step. Gently remove your dough ball from the plastic wrap. If it's a little crumbly, that's okay; simply smoosh it together a little and continue.
Oddly enough, swords and daggers won't cut it here. Instead, have a staff-wielder roll their staff over the dough, flipping it from time to time to make sure it isn't sticking, rolling it into a circular shape. You should have a flat, roughly circular sheet of dough in a minute or two.
Carefully fold the sheet in half and lay it on a pie pan. Flip it out to cover the pie pan, and cut off any excess dough. Use your thumb and forefinger to pinch the edges around the pie pan, and then proceed with the regular mode encounter. You may want the off tank to hold the boss in the fridge until you're ready to combine everything this time around.
As with most Cataclysm raids, heroic difficulty takes a few tries to perfect -- don't expect to one-shot this boss. But once you've done it correctly one time through, you shouldn't have any problems at all repeating the process!
The loot
Watch that loot chest, it's going to be hot! Wait for it to cool completely before divvying it up amongst your raiders. And I mean completely. If you try before it cools completely, you may end up with runaway berries all over the place -- and a runny pie isn't easy to distribute evenly! Keep in mind that the heroic version of this pie includes a crust loaded with real butter. Heroic version pie should be devoured in moderation. Serve by itself, or pull out the trusty Ice Cream Churner and whip up a little vanilla to go with it!
Tart and sweet, this pie needs no real special occasion to whip up, other than an appetite (and maybe a sale on blueberries at the local store!).
Still confused?
If you're still confused regarding raid composition or strats, check out the gallery for a complete, illustrated guide to all strats for this encounter. Enjoy!
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