Creamy Apple Pear Pie

My family used to go to a wonderful, local restaurant in New Jersey when I was a teenager. It wasn't a chain restaurant and it had amazing food. The dish I most remember was a creamy apple pie. With apples and pears as the only fruits in season this time of year, that pie has been on my mind. For Christmas Eve dinner, I decided to give a healthy version a try.

I used the same whole-wheat pie crust recipe as for Cinnamon Apple Pie.

For the filling, I used:

3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into rings
3 pears, peeled, cored, and sliced into rings

[After slicing the apples and pears, I tossed them into a bowl with some orange juice to keep them from browning. Once the apples and pears were well coated, I drained out the orange juice.]

1 cup of fat-free Greek yogurt
1/4 cup of honey
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon corn starch

I stirred these ingredients together and then mixed it over the fruit.

I then arranged the apples in the pie crust.

Instead of covering the whole pie with another layer of crust, I used cookie cutters to cut Christmas-tree shaped pieces of pie crust out and then laid them over top in an overlapping row.  Leaving some of the apples and pears exposed allowed them to crisp and caramelize a bit in the oven.  I baked the pie for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  This allowed all the apples and pears to maintain some "bite."  It could be baked for another 15 minutes or so if you prefer softer apples and pears in your pie.

The result was quite close to what I remember from that fabulous restaurant in New Jersey, but without what I'm sure was A LOT of heavy cream.  With a whole-wheat crust, fresh fruit, and fat-free yogurt, this pie is healthy enough to eat for breakfast!