Fresh Mini Blueberry Pie
Prep 5 mins Bake Pie Shells 8 mins Cook 10 mins Cool 10 mins Assemble 2 mins Eat 27 mins
I’ve had Dorothy’s Fresh Blueberry Pie in my mind since I read about it on Shockingly Delicious a year ago. What took me so long? Evan Kleiman, who’s long been on the food scene in Southern California with her “Good Food” radio show and legendary restaurant, Angeli Caffe, proclaimed this Blueberry Pie “genius” as she was promoting her annual pie contest on a local TV segment in 2010. I learned how “genius” this pie is when I made it in the space of less than 30 minutes and served it to my guests at the Hollywood Bowl two hours later.
When I saw a giant container of fresh blueberries in Costco for $4.99, I picked them up and thought about that pie. I made the mistake of putting the blueberries front and center in my refrigerator. The next time I looked they were slowly disappearing. But a concert at the Hollywood Bowl to see Yuja Wang perform Prokofiev inspired me to make Dorothy’s Fresh Blueberry Pie.
Wilton’s Mini Pie Pan was perfect for my Mini Blueberry Pies.
By the time I started on the Blueberry Pie project, there were not enough blueberries for a whole pie, so I halved the recipe and then I remembered the very clever mini-pie pan from Wilton that was in my swag bag at Camp Blogaway. Perfect. I was serving six people, so I could make six Mini Blueberry Pies. I had a disc of frozen pie dough in my freezer from another baking adventure. I rolled out the dough to make six small circles and placed them in the mini-pie tin, lined them with some pie weights and blind baked the pie shells at 375° for about 8 minutes or until the pie shells are set and golden brown around the edges. Blind baking simply means to bake the shell without any filling in it. Keep in mind that the pie crust will shrink and slide down the sides when blind baking, so you should start with an ample crust and use the pie weights to keep it in place. See how to make a home-made pie crust and further details on blind baking by clicking here.
Boiling some of the blueberries with water, sugar, salt, cinnamon and cornstarch.
Did I tell you how easy it was to make this pie or rather the mini pies? Can you boil water with some sugar, blueberries and a few more things in it? That’s kinda all you need to do to make this delicious or “genius” pie. The most important thing to remember is that you need to divide the blueberries into three groups to add in three different stages.
Mash up the blueberries with a potato masher to form a sauce.
Mash up one group of blueberries in the mixture so it looks like a sauce. You need to cool the sauce. I simply put the pan in the refrigerator while I got my other meal items ready, but Dorothy recommends a quick way to cool the filling before adding the rest of the blueberries is to fill a large salad-type bowl with ice and water. Partially submerge the pan with the cooked blueberries in this cold bath, stirring every once in awhile and in 5 or so minutes, it will be sufficiently cooled to continue with your recipe. You can also just set the pan on an unused burner while it cools off, but the cold water bath is much faster and lets you get your pie into the refrigerator more quickly if you are in a hurry.
More fresh blueberries are added to the cooled blueberry sauce.
Once the sauce is cooled, add the second group of fresh blueberries to coat them with the sauce and immediately pour the mixture into your prebaked pie shells.
Mini Blueberry Pies are almost ready to take to the Hollywood Bowl.
Look at how gorgeous the Mini Blueberry Pies are and there’s one more step.
Beautiful Blueberry Pies are ready for my Hollywood Bowl picnic basket.
Now top the Mini Blueberry Pies with the third group of fresh blueberries and you are about ready to serve them.
Making Mini Blueberry Pies was as easy as pie.
A chill in the refrigerator, a sprinkle of powdered sugar and I was on my way. While Dorothy recommends chilling the Blueberry Pie for 2 hours, very little chilling was necessary for the Mini Blueberry Pies, since they were not going to be cut, but eaten individually. This made the Fresh Mini Blueberry Pies truly Fresh Food in a Flash.
By the way, if you want to see Dorothy’s “genius” Blueberry Pie as a whole pie, visit ShockinglyDelicious.com.
Dorothy’s Fresh Blueberry Pie
3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 Tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup water
5 cups fresh blueberries, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 Tablespoons butter (not margarine)
2 teaspoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 teaspoon lemon zest, finely grated (yellow only)
1 10-inch pie crust, blind baked and cooled
1 Tablespoon powdered sugar
1. In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, salt and cinnamon. Blend in water and 1 1/2 cups blueberries. Bring to a boil, stirring and smashing half the berries deliberately (use a potato masher if you like.) Boil, stirring constantly, until mixture is very thick, a minute or so. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, butter, lemon juice and lemon zest. Cool.
2. Fold into saucepan 2 1/2 cups blueberries, coating them well. Scoop into cooled baked pie shell. Arrange remaining 1 cups of fresh blueberries over the top. Chill at least 2 hours or overnight if needed.
3. Serve plain, or with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. To serve, remove pie from refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature. Sift powdered sugar over top to garnish.
Servings: 12 187 calories per serving
Dorothy's Fresh Blueberry Pie
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 1/2 Tablespoon cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2/3 cup water
- 5 cups fresh blueberries divided
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 Tablespoons butter not margarine
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice freshly squeezed
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest finely grated (yellow only)
- 1 10- inch pie crust blind baked and cooled
- 1 Tablespoon powdered sugar
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, salt and cinnamon. Blend in water and 1 1/2 cups blueberries. Bring to a boil, stirring and smashing half the berries deliberately (use a potato masher if you like.) Boil, stirring constantly, until mixture is very thick, a minute or so. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, butter, lemon juice and lemon zest. Cool.
- Fold into saucepan 2 1/2 cups blueberries, coating them well. Scoop into cooled baked pie shell. Arrange remaining 1 cups of fresh blueberries over the top. Chill at least 2 hours or overnight if needed.
- Serve plain, or with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. To serve, remove pie from refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature. Sift powdered sugar over top to garnish.
- ENJOY THIS RECIPE FROM FreshFoodinaFlash.com
Nutrition
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Your tarts are BEAUTIFUL! Well done! And thank you for the kind words about the pie.
Oh my, this is perfect since I just bought the same blueberries at Costco today!
[…] her interpretation of my Fresh Blueberry Pie, and don’t they look good? She calls them Fresh Mini Blueberry Pies, and they are so cute in tiny form. This is the pie recipe that chef Evan Kleiman called […]