Blueberry Pie
There is not much in this world that is more satisfying than a well made blueberry pie.
How many times have you gotten a blueberry pie and it was crust and blue liquid? Not much fun to eat. And not very inspiring to have made either.
I didn't want that to happen when I made the pie for small group. (This is a group of us from the church who get together and have fellowship and study things from the Bible and basically do life together).
I have no pictures of the process but imagine this: I have no pie crust yet. But I already put a cup of tiny little wild blueberries into the pot with the cornstarch and sugar. I boiled them until they were dark purple, all while looking up recipes for good pie crust.
I have 5 recipes for pie crust, but my favorite one is labeled 'the best', and rightly so. It requires a food processor, which I have, with an actual blade which I do not. The dishwasher ate it.
Not to be dissuaded, I used the squish method on the butter pieces and made the crust by hand.
The recipe calls for an entire stick of butter, folks. That's a lot of butter. After about the 3rd crust, my arms were getting tired. (One for the bottom, one for the lattice top, and another for an entirely different set of mini peach pies.Go big or go home, I say).
All this with bags of frozen mini blueberries, box of cornstarch, several bowls, and sugar everywhere, I'm looking for a space to roll out the crust and the blueberries are now done. Crap.
So I run and mix in the rest of the blueberries, letting them all sit while I roll out the crust.
The use of wax paper is genius here, no flour mess all over the table and floor. Really cool, except the wax paper ends up getting a little wet then starts to wrinkle, as we all do.
Finally the bottom crust is ready and I pour in the blueberries. They are so very dark blue, it's impressive. I hope this works.
Then I get to work on building the lattice. This is basically rolling out the dough, cutting into strips and weaving it up one and down the other strip until it looks fairly right.
Then I needed to make a pretty outside crust and ran out of dough. Uh oh.
Thankfully I had plenty of butter so I made a third crust to make enough to put on a pretty crust around the outside.
Now I had a bunch of crust dough and no more fruit.
So then I decided to try out my peach pie recipe and make little pies out of cupcake tins.
I haven't heard yet but am hoping they were good. I gave those to my buddies from Romeo. We have plans for the peach pies during Peach Festival if all goes well.
Moving right along, I now had a blueberry pie that needed to be baked. The recipe calls for 30 minutes and I fretted. What if it's too much or not enough. I kept peeking.
Well the outside crust was done but the center part looked like it had bubbles. Was that good? Was it done?
I didnt know. But I didnt want to over bake, so I put the pie down and let it cool, then waited until the next day. Sunday morning I looked and it looked like this:
Well kinda. You can see slice marks where I was cutting it before I realized I better get a picture.
It just looked...perfect. So I brought it to group.
As I cut it I worried the blueberries would run, but they did not. Well, yay!
*By the way, I just realized now, I forgot the lemon zest, so its totally good without it.
So that's my story of the blueberry pie.
And now you want the recipe, yes?
Here you go:
BLUEBERRY PIE
Ingredients:
4 cups blueberries
1/2 c sugar
2 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp Butter
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel*
1 double pie crust recipe
Roll out pie crust into 9 inch pie pan. In saucepan, mix 1 cup blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, and 2 Tbsp water. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir until thickened and clear. Stir in butter, cool 5 mins.
Stir in the remaining 3 cups blueberries and lemon peel.
Set oven to 400 F. Turn cooled filling into pie shell. Lay remaining pie crust on wax paper. Roll and cut into 3/8 inch wide strips. Arrange like lattice.
Bake in bottom third of oven until crust is golden and filling bubbles gently, about 30 mins. Cool on rack.
P.S., we served this with vanilla bean ice cream. It was so good! You must serve it with vanilla bean ice cream. Must.
(The Best) PIE CRUST RECIPE
This makes a 9 inch pie crust, so if you need a top crust, double it.
Ingredients:
1 1/8 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
8 Tbsp cold butter, cut into bits
3 Tbsp ice water, more if needed
Mix flour, salt, sugar in a large bowl. Add butter and cut into the flour by squishing it and turning flour around it, until it looks like cornmeal. Sprinkle the water over the mix and use a spoon to mix and gather into a ball. Wrap in plastic or wax paper and freeze for 10 minutes.
Roll out the dough between 2 sheets of wax paper. Roll to 1/4 inch thickness and round in shape. This requires rolling and turning a few times.
How many times have you gotten a blueberry pie and it was crust and blue liquid? Not much fun to eat. And not very inspiring to have made either.
I didn't want that to happen when I made the pie for small group. (This is a group of us from the church who get together and have fellowship and study things from the Bible and basically do life together).
I have no pictures of the process but imagine this: I have no pie crust yet. But I already put a cup of tiny little wild blueberries into the pot with the cornstarch and sugar. I boiled them until they were dark purple, all while looking up recipes for good pie crust.
I have 5 recipes for pie crust, but my favorite one is labeled 'the best', and rightly so. It requires a food processor, which I have, with an actual blade which I do not. The dishwasher ate it.
Not to be dissuaded, I used the squish method on the butter pieces and made the crust by hand.
The recipe calls for an entire stick of butter, folks. That's a lot of butter. After about the 3rd crust, my arms were getting tired. (One for the bottom, one for the lattice top, and another for an entirely different set of mini peach pies.Go big or go home, I say).
All this with bags of frozen mini blueberries, box of cornstarch, several bowls, and sugar everywhere, I'm looking for a space to roll out the crust and the blueberries are now done. Crap.
So I run and mix in the rest of the blueberries, letting them all sit while I roll out the crust.
The use of wax paper is genius here, no flour mess all over the table and floor. Really cool, except the wax paper ends up getting a little wet then starts to wrinkle, as we all do.
Finally the bottom crust is ready and I pour in the blueberries. They are so very dark blue, it's impressive. I hope this works.
Then I get to work on building the lattice. This is basically rolling out the dough, cutting into strips and weaving it up one and down the other strip until it looks fairly right.
Then I needed to make a pretty outside crust and ran out of dough. Uh oh.
Thankfully I had plenty of butter so I made a third crust to make enough to put on a pretty crust around the outside.
Now I had a bunch of crust dough and no more fruit.
So then I decided to try out my peach pie recipe and make little pies out of cupcake tins.
I haven't heard yet but am hoping they were good. I gave those to my buddies from Romeo. We have plans for the peach pies during Peach Festival if all goes well.
Moving right along, I now had a blueberry pie that needed to be baked. The recipe calls for 30 minutes and I fretted. What if it's too much or not enough. I kept peeking.
Well the outside crust was done but the center part looked like it had bubbles. Was that good? Was it done?
I didnt know. But I didnt want to over bake, so I put the pie down and let it cool, then waited until the next day. Sunday morning I looked and it looked like this:
Well kinda. You can see slice marks where I was cutting it before I realized I better get a picture.
It just looked...perfect. So I brought it to group.
As I cut it I worried the blueberries would run, but they did not. Well, yay!
*By the way, I just realized now, I forgot the lemon zest, so its totally good without it.
So that's my story of the blueberry pie.
And now you want the recipe, yes?
Here you go:
BLUEBERRY PIE
Ingredients:
4 cups blueberries
1/2 c sugar
2 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp Butter
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel*
1 double pie crust recipe
Roll out pie crust into 9 inch pie pan. In saucepan, mix 1 cup blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, and 2 Tbsp water. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir until thickened and clear. Stir in butter, cool 5 mins.
Stir in the remaining 3 cups blueberries and lemon peel.
Set oven to 400 F. Turn cooled filling into pie shell. Lay remaining pie crust on wax paper. Roll and cut into 3/8 inch wide strips. Arrange like lattice.
Bake in bottom third of oven until crust is golden and filling bubbles gently, about 30 mins. Cool on rack.
P.S., we served this with vanilla bean ice cream. It was so good! You must serve it with vanilla bean ice cream. Must.
(The Best) PIE CRUST RECIPE
This makes a 9 inch pie crust, so if you need a top crust, double it.
Ingredients:
1 1/8 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
8 Tbsp cold butter, cut into bits
3 Tbsp ice water, more if needed
Mix flour, salt, sugar in a large bowl. Add butter and cut into the flour by squishing it and turning flour around it, until it looks like cornmeal. Sprinkle the water over the mix and use a spoon to mix and gather into a ball. Wrap in plastic or wax paper and freeze for 10 minutes.
Roll out the dough between 2 sheets of wax paper. Roll to 1/4 inch thickness and round in shape. This requires rolling and turning a few times.
Yummy looking pie !! I have tried to make blueberry pies before once or twice, but they always turn out runny. I have to try this recipe ! Good job !
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