HOME TOUR

After coming home with quarts of freshly picked blueberries from the blueberry patch, I got to work making a classic blueberry pie. Pretty much the quintessential summertime dessert.

Wanting to stick with a classic blueberry pie flavor, I opted to skip spices like cinnamon to really let that blueberry flavor shine. There’s nothing like fresh picked blueberries.

 

INGREDIENTS

3 Quarts Fresh Blueberries

1 C Granulated Sugar (or organic coconut sugar, I’ve made it both ways and it’s delicious)

1/4 C Organic Corn Starch

Zest and Juice of One Lemon

Pinch of Salt

 

for the crust:

2 C All Purpose Flour

1 Stick Organic Salted Butter, Frozen

1/2 C Organic Vegetable Shortening

1 tsp Salt

6-8 Tbsp Ice Water

INSTRUCTIONS

Start by preparing your crust. Measure 2 C of all purpose flour and the salt into a mixing bowl. I keep my butter frozen and cut it with a large butcher knife. Using a pastry cutter, blend the cut up butter and shortening into the flour until you are left with pea size pieces throughout. This is an arm workout. Stick this flour mixture in the freezer. I know this is odd but I swear by it! Keeping the ingredients cold keeps the pie crust flakey and freezing these ingredients before you’ve added the water makes rolling the pie dough so much easier. Give it a try for yourself. I keep my flour mixture in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.

Give your blueberries a good rinse to make sure they are clean. We brought home quite a bit of straw from the field (thank you Aubrey) and I ended up soaking and rinsing our blueberries a good bit. In a large mixing bowl, combine clean blueberries, lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, a pinch of salt and cornstarch. Stir to mix thoroughly and set aside.

Grab your flour mixture out of the freezer, add water until you have a moldable pie dough, ie not too crumbly. On a floured surface, roll out your dough into a large circle, 1/4″ thick. Drape over the pie pan and softly fill every edge of the pie plate. Using a paring knife, cut away the excess leaving a good 1/2″ hanging over the side so you can crimp the edge. Use the excess to reroll and make squares for a checkerboard top, as pictured. I used my remnant pie dough to roll flowers and leaves for decoration too.

Sprinkle top with granulated sugar and bake at 375 degrees F for 40 ish minutes until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.

Let that pie cool completely before cutting into it. This helps it set. Or put it in a bowl and eat it hot with vanilla ice cream. Yum.

I hope you enjoy this delicious classic blueberry pie recipe and pictures by the talented Ruth Eileen Photography. It sure was the perfect way to top off blueberry picking at the farm.