In my refrigerator each Easter you will find two Easter Pies: Barb’s Easter Pie and Fran’s Easter Pie. Barb’s is a sweet dessert filled with ricotta cheese, eggs, rice and pine nuts. Fran’s Easter Pie is a tempting appetizer, a pizza rustica filled with sausage, pepperoni, a few herbs and whatever else I have in the refrigerator (this year it’s sun dried tomatoes and parsley. More on that soon).
Easter morning after church my husband and I broke into Barb’s Easter Pie. It’s sweet but not overly rich, the perfect spring dessert. The eggs fluffen up and lighten the cheese (this is not nearly as dense as a New York style cheesecake) and orange zest makes it all taste a little brighter – a true signal of longer days and warmer mornings in the Midwest.
My recipe is the same as Giada’s, but I use refrigerated pie crusts instead of pastry. My crust doesn’t brown, either, so watch the oven. I bet this would be really nice with a glass of Prosecco….