A freshly baked fruit pie, full of tender apples or juicy berries, is one of the most delicious things that you can pull out of your oven. Unfortunately, when you are baking a fruit pie, you are often left with drips and splatters of fruit juice and filling that have bubbled over the edges of your pie pastry. My solution to this is to place a sheet of aluminum foil on top of the baking rack to catch the drips. The foil typically gets stuck to the bottom of the pie plate with this method, but it is effective and it is much easier to throw out the foil than to scrub filling out of the bottom of the oven.
It turns out that there is a baking gadget out there that is designed specifically to combat the problem of fruit pie filling running over and getting stuck on the bottom of your oven. The Nifty Pie Baking Combo Rack has a circular drip pan topped with a chrome-plated cooling rack. The pie is placed right on the rack before going into the oven, and after baking, the same rack doubles as a pie-shaped cooling rack for your pie. The designers of the rack say that it helps pies bake more evenly (although if you have a standard oven rack there should be plenty of circulation around a pie even without this rack) and it has plenty of reviews from very happy covers. For a pie baker, it might be worth a look, and it might make a good gift for a bakery in your life who specializes in pies.
Stephanie P.
September 22, 2011I’m intrigued by this, but wonder if the pie plate slides on the rack when you move it? As I’ve been burnt by sliding pans (on parchment or foil) on more than one occassion.
My preferred baking method is putting my pie plate on a silicone mat topped baking sheet. The Silpat holds the pie on the sheet so it doesn’t slide when I’m rotating or moving it. Also catches the drips, doesn’t stick to the pie pan when moved to a cooling rack, and since it’s non-stick, is a cinch to wash.