Blueberry Pie

I know. It's been forever since my last post. But a girl's gotta work! (And go to school full time). It's not that I'm not cooking, but somehow it's just seems inopportune to photograph everything while I'm baking up a storm. Now that it's summer though, I'm out of excuses. I've taken your hints to get back to work and have chosen to start off the [mid]summer with a blueberry pie.

The mounds of fresh blueberries took my lattice crust prisoner.

The entire idea for a pie came to me when I was grocery shopping this week. Late at night - as I like to do rather often. Thank heavens we have a 24-hour grocery store here, because it's nice to know I can stare at the food and envision the week's meals without anyone questioning my my sanity. Anyways, blueberries were 6 for 10. 6 pints. $10. No. Way. And so I bought them. It's blueberry season, you know.

A friend of mine is having a birthday this week. Searching for an excuse to bake with them, I then tried to convince that friend that he wanted a blueberry pie with candles stuck into it. A no-go. Just my luck. He hates blueberries.

So I made it anyway.

I like this pie. It's not too sweet. There's not that store-bought goop texture surrounding the berries. It's natural and fresh tasting. It's exactly what it claims to be: a blueberry pie. And I'm all about that.

It was also - as always - easy to make. I just sort of made it up as I went along, so there are only a few ingredients and they all serve to bring out the berries.

Ingredients

Crust:

Any pie crust will work on this pie. Here's one. Here's another. Just double the recipe.

Filling:

5-6 cups of fresh blueberries, rinsed and stems removed

1/4 cup all-purpose flour (to thicken things up)

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 Tbsp butter (unsalted), diced

To make pie

Preheat oven to 425°F. Prepare the crust. Again, you can use anything here. Fit the dough over a 9-inch pie pan, and trim the edges to a 1/2 inch over the edge all around the pan. Put into the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes.

Gently mix the blueberries, sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Depending on how sweet you like your pie, you can cut the amount of sugar. That is the only thing I would do in retrospect. Blueberries are sweet enough on their own - especially when they have 50 minutes in the oven to caramelize. Transfer them to the chilled bottom crust of the pie pan. Dot with diced butter pieces.

I did a lattice top, but you just need some sort of covering for a fruit pie. If you want to cover it entirely, roll out the remaining dough to the same size and thickness as the first and place on top. Transfer the pie to the refrigerator to chill until the dough is firm, about 30 minutes. If you skipped the home-made pie dough and bought a frozen sheet, you probably don't need to do this step.

Remove the unbaked pie from refrigerator. If you covered the pie entirely, score the pie on the top with 4 cuts (for steam). Place the pie on the middle rack of the oven with a parchment paper or Silpat lined baking pan positioned on the lower rack to catch any filling that may bubble over. Bake for 20 minutes at 425°. Reduce heat to 350°F and bake for 30 to 40 minutes more or until juices are bubbling and have thickened. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Adapted from Simply Recipes