Contents
Molasses and brown sugar under a crumb top, from the Pennsylvania Dutch. The name is usually explained by flies attracted to the open molasses, and the pie comes in two forms that are genuinely different desserts: wet-bottom, with a layer of gooey molasses custard under a cake layer, and dry-bottom, where the crumb is mixed all the way through and the result is closer to a coffee cake in a crust.
Wet-bottom is the one worth making.
What makes it work
- The soda goes in the boiling water, not the dry mix. Baking soda dissolved in boiling water and stirred into the molasses is what makes the wet layer foam up and then settle under the crumb.
- Layer, do not mix. Molasses liquid in the shell first, then two-thirds of the crumb scattered on, then the rest. The liquid rises through the lower crumb as it bakes and leaves a gooey stratum at the base.
- Use a real baking molasses, not blackstrap — blackstrap is bitter enough to ruin it. See Molasses.
- Do not blind bake. This is one of the few custard-ish pies where the raw shell is correct; the filling is thick enough not to soak it.
- Take it out slightly underdone in the middle. The wet bottom is the point.
Ingredients
One 23 cm pie. Serves 8.
- 1 unbaked shell — all-butter pie crust
Crumb:
- 250 g all-purpose flour
- 150 g light brown sugar
- 115 g unsalted butter, cold and cubed
- 3 g fine salt
- 2 g ground cinnamon
- 2 g nutmeg
Molasses layer:
Method
Heat the oven to 190 °C / 375 °F. Line the tin with pastry and chill it.
Rub the crumb ingredients together to coarse crumbs and set aside.
Stir the soda into the boiling water — it will fizz — then whisk in the molasses, brown sugar and beaten egg.
Pour the liquid into the chilled shell. Scatter two-thirds of the crumb evenly over the surface; it will sink partly. Scatter the remaining third on top.
Bake 15 minutes at 190 °C, then reduce to 175 °C / 350 °F for 30–35 minutes, until the crumb is set and the centre still moves slightly.
Cool completely, at least three hours.
Notes
- It is eaten at breakfast in Lancaster County, with coffee, which tells you something about how sweet Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast is.
- Dry-bottom: mix all the crumb into the liquid and bake as one. Firmer, more cake-like, keeps longer.
- Keeps four days at room temperature.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Pie and tart recipes · pies and tarts · Molasses
Nearby: chess pie · treacle tart · sugar cream pie