GREAT idea!

Great idea from this link:

http://www.sunset.com/food-wine/techniques/summer-pie-anytime-00400000015380/

Summer pie, anytime

Freeze fruit now for dessert later

Photo: James Carrier

Like Christmas, apricot season comes but once a year ― and it's over about as quickly as Christmas morning. But that season is intense. A corner of my father's almond orchard in California's Central Valley has always been reserved for fruit trees, so every summer we were overwhelmed with stone fruit. In spite of valiant efforts, we just couldn't eat it fast enough.

My mother didn't want to let the fruit go to waste, so she made the apricots into pie filling and froze it. Sunset test kitchen manager Bernadette Hart adds the extra tip of freezing the filling in the shape of the pan so it can be dropped right from the freezer into a pastry shell and baked.

Now that I live in San Francisco, I'm no longer troubled by an excess of perfectly ripe summer fruit; I buy it at a farmers' market. But for me, there's no better dessert than apricot pie, with its slightly bitter edge, so I still freeze a couple of fillings every summer, just to have that bittersweet pleasure anytime I like.

Notes: To thicken this filling, use a basic ratio of 1 tablespoon of flour for every 2 cups of apricots. Peaches and plums may be juicier; for very juicy fruit, increase flour to up to 1 tablespoon per cup of fruit.

Yield: Makes filling for one 9-inch pie

Ingredients

• 3 pounds firm-ripe apricots, peaches, or plums
• About 1/2 cup sugar
• About 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon or mace
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preparation

1. Cut each of the apricots lengthwise into quarters (sixths if they're very large), discarding pits. (If using peaches, peel them and cut into thin wedges. If using plums, cut fruit into 1/2-inch slices.) You should have about 8 cups fruit total.

2. In a large bowl, gently mix fruit, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour (see notes), lemon juice, cinnamon, and salt. Taste fruit and add more sugar if desired (up to 3/4 cup total).

3. Line a 9-inch pie pan with a 20-inch-long sheet of foil (there should be about 5 inches of overhang on each side of the pan). Line the foil with a 20-inch-long piece of plastic wrap. Pour fruit into plastic wrap; pull edges together and fold over to seal, then repeat to seal foil over plastic. Freeze up to 3 months, removing from pie pan, if desired, after filling is hard, in about 8 hours.

From freezer to oven

To bake the pie, unwrap frozen filling and place in a 9-inch pie pan lined with an unbaked crust; cover with top crust, crimp edges to seal, and cut small slits in top to vent. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake pie in a 375° regular or convection oven until crust is browned and filling is bubbling in the center, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. (If crust gets too brown before filling is bubbling, cover edges loosely with foil.)

If baking a fresh pie, after mixing filling in step 2, pour directly into unbaked pastry, cover, crimp, and slit. Bake for about 1 hour.