Blueberry Hand Pies

Yum

The other day I made blueberry pie.  And that blueberry pie led to scraps. And those scraps led to Blueberry Hand Pies. And you know what? I liked the mini pies better than the real pie. Go figure. So technically this recipe was enough for 1 regular pie and about 8 mini pies, but you can do the entire recipe out of minis, if you prefer. Blueberry filling also freezes well if you want to have some for say . . . cheesecake later on. Just food for thought.

What are we waiting for? Let’s do this!

Blueberry Hand Pies

Ingredients:

Triple pie crust, cut into small circles

6 cups blueberries, washed and stems removed

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. lemon extract

6 tbsp. cornstarch mixed with enough water to make a milky liquid

Directions:

Prepare pie crust and wrap in plastic wrap dough in the refrigerator until ready to use.  To make blueberry filling, combine blueberries, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon extract in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil and simmer just until berries have mostly burst and mixture is bubbling. Add in cornstarch slurry all at once, stirring for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until mixture thickens. Remove from heat and allow to cool down.

When the blueberry mixture has cooled down to warm, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Roll out pie crust and use a cookie cutter to cut 3 inch circles out of pastry and place crust bases on a silpat lined baking sheet.  Use egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tsp. water) to brush around edges of the bottom crust.  Use a cookie scoop to place 1 tbsp. of blueberry filling into the center of each pastry circle.  Place another circle of pie crust overtop and squish the filling down slightly.  Use a fork to seal the edges and brush the top with egg wash.  Top with sparkling sugar, if desired.  Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes, until crust is golden brown.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Now in pictures! 🙂

BLUESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS in the night.

Is there anything more glorious than a fresh, ripe, summer blueberry?  Seriously.  When these babies are in season, stock up and freeze some for the dull winter months when everything is different shades of brown.  Wash the berries off in a collander and take out any remaining stems.

This little blueberry seems to have a hernia. Hmm.

Next, combine your blueberries, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon extract in a large saucepan over medium heat.  What we want to do is basically just simmer the berries until they start to burst and let go of some of the juice.  Bubble bubble, toil and trouble, you know.  In the past sometimes I just combined these ingredients, dry, into my pie crust.  But almost without fail that leads to a runny pie, so now I make my filling beforehand, just to be safe.

While your blueberry mixture is bubbling away, start on your pie crust.  I have a recipe for pie crust here, but just a note– if you don’t have one already, I strongly recommend the Perfect Pie Blender.  It makes whipping up pie crusts, biscuits . . . any sort of “quick dough,” so much easier.  When you finish your pie crust, wrap the entire dough ball up in plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator to chill until you’re ready to use it.

By the time you get your pie crust nicely chilling in the fridge, your blueberry mixture should look something like this.  You want some of the berries to have given up their juice, but there should still be some whole berries in there.  See?  If you hadn’t been so smart and done this ahead of time, all that juice would leak out of your pie when you cut it. You’re so smart. I love working with you.

Mix your cornstarch in a separate bowl with just enough water to make it into a milky fluid (called a cornstarch slurry). Keep mixing the cornstarch/water with a spoon until everything is combined, and then add all at once to your bubbling blueberry mixture.

It doesn’t take long.  You only have to stir about 30 seconds to a minute before it starts to get thick enough that your spoon leaves a nice trail when you stir.  When you see this thickening, turn off the heat and take the pan from the stove.  She’s done, folks! Let this blueberry filling cool a little bit before you put it into the mini pies– we don’t want to burn the little dears now, do we?

Usually the timing of this works out perfectly.  Once your pie filling is done, you can start rolling out the little circles, and by the time you have them ready, generally the filling has moved to just warm, and you can start assembling pies right away.  Start by rolling out your dough to pie crust thickness, and use a circle cookie cutter (other shapes work too but they aren’t as easy to fill) to cut out your base shape.  Place the bases on a silpat lined cookie sheet so that they won’t burn their crusty little behinds when we bake them.

Use a cookie scoop to place about 1 tbsp. of filling on top of each circle.  Eh, give or take.  This isn’t science. You just don’t want to have so little that you can’t even taste the blueberry, or so much that it oozes out of the pie when it’s baking.  Yes, I did have a little extra at the end, and yes, bottom right got a little extra because I didn’t want to waste it. Yes, it overflowed. Yes, I should have seen that coming.  Oh well.

Use egg wash (1 egg beaten with about 1 tsp. of water) to brush around the edges of the base circle. The egg wash will act like glue when you stick on the top circle.  I like to use a fork to crimp the edges to together to seal them even more.  Egg wash the tops, again, and sprinkle with a little bit of sparkling sugar.  There is nothing better than a tiny, glittery pie. 🙂

You guessed it. Oven time!

Bake these little cuties at 375 for about 20-25 minutes. The filling is already cooked, so you really just need your crust to be nice and toasty golden brown, like a sunbathing senior on a FL beach.

And because you were good little students and used the silpat, nothing stuck to your cookie sheet.  So you can let these sweet little mini pies cool and then easily take them off the cookie sheet to feast.

No utensils needed.  Perfect for a summer picnic.

Stars and stripes forever.

You did it!  And I’m just so proud of you.

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