For Chinese New Year, my cousin had the genius idea of making a Lychee Longan Pie. As far as Chinese desserts go, canned lychee and longan are better than most in my opinion. You just open the can and eat the fruit, but it’s way better than that red bean nonsense that passes for dessert in China. So if eating the plain fruit is good, making it into a pie is even better. There are so many fantastic fruits that don’t ever seem to make it into pie – I’m making it my personal mission to change that. I like to think of this one as my Chinese equivalent of apple pie.

Guessipe

• 1 pie crust

filling

• 1 can lychee
• 1 can longan
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 TBSP cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 TBSP corn starch

Topping

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 stick butter
• 2 tsp cinnamon

Reserve the liquid from one of the cans of fruit. Combine the remaining liquid, lychee, longan, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger in a pot.

Bring to a boil. Mix the cornstarch into the reserved liquid, then gradually add to the fruit mixture while stirring continuously to thicken. Remove from heat when you reach your preferred consistency – you may not need to use all of the cornstarch slurry.

Cut together all of the Topping ingredients until well mixed and crumbly. If you don’t happen to have a container of oats laying around, you can just grab some instant oat packets and sift out the oats.

Pour the Filling into the pie crust, then cover with the Topping. Bake at 425 degrees F for 45 minutes. The pre-made pie crust I bought for this one happened to be bigger than my pie pan, so I folded it into a sort of galette, which turned out kind of nice because it made the crust look home-made. It used less crumble, so I froze the remaining crumble for future use in another pie. It also works fine to just use a regular bottom pie crust and top with more crumble.