Turn your oven to 425 degrees. Put three sticks of butter and a bowl of water that has ice in it in the fridge. Cubes, not chips. Put the food-processor bowl and the sharp blade thingy in the freezer.

When that stuff gets cold, take out the bowl and blade and put in 2 3/4 cups of flour, a teaspoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt. Cut 2 1/4 sticks of butter into pieces the size of a camera battery and drop them in a couple at a time while hitting “pulse” on the machine till it all looks like coarse meal. If you don’t know what that is, go look at the smaller pieces of gravel in your driveway.

Slowly pour, like, 7 or 8 tablespoons of the ice water in with the flour gravel and pulse it till it comes together into a ball that isn’t sticky. Take it out and knead it on a counter sprinkled with flour, but not too much or the molecules will get stretchy and the dough will be tough. Form the dough into two big air-hockey pucks and cover with plastic wrap. Put them in the fridge for at least an hour. If you forget about the dough, you can throw it in the freezer (but once the seasons have changed, chuck it).

Roll the pucks into circles bigger than a pie. Drape one over the pie pan with a little extra hanging over, and fill it with cut-up fruit mixed with a little flour, cinnamon, and a drop or two of rum, and dot the top with butter. Cover it with the other dough circle, pinch the edges together, and cut some little holes in the top of the pie with a knife. Make a design or write a message to someone, code or otherwise. For a yummy, richer crust, brush with heavy cream and sprinkle with raw sugar from the packets at Starbucks. Put foil all around the edge so it doesn’t burn; take it off after the pie has cooked for, like, 20 minutes and turn the temp down to 350. Cook for 25 minutes more or until juice is bubbling out of the Morse-code slashes. Take it out and let it sit for as long as you can wait but not so long that it gets cold.

via esquire