When summer hits in Vancouver everyone knows that one thing is coming for sure, tons of fresh blueberries at a very good price. If you buy a big box of blueberries, there are loads of things you can do, but the typical include making jams and jellies for storage, and the incredibly delicious blueberry pie. With intense and vibrant colours and a subtle but exquisite flavour that is not very sweet won’t allow you to get bored with it.
Preparing the filling of this pie is extremely easy and takes very little time. You will need to cook half of the blueberries and crush them a bit with a potato masher to release liquid and reduce the blueberries quite a bit. This purple reduction mixed with the cornstarch will provide the foundation for the whole blueberries and sugar that are going to be incorporated later. By doing this, the result will be a nice homogeneous filling inside the pie.
The trick to getting a vibrant and intense purple colour of the filling is the lemon juice. The lemon juice accentuates the colour of a lot of berries, that is why almost always you add a small amount of lemon juice to jams, jellies or other reductions. It is really incredible how the colour changes when you add it and after you cook it!
For this recipe, we are going to use our gluten-free pie crust recipe that yields the bottom and top layers for a 9-inch pie plate! If you haven’t seen it, you can follow this link to make it beforehand! Be aware that you need some time for the dough to cool before you can use it here. You can always try to find some pre-made gluten-free pie shells, but you would need to figure out the cooking times for those ones, as well as how much filling would work with the size of the one you have (I am sorry about that). One thing that is a must, is that the blueberry filling must be bubbling hot when you take it out from the oven, that is the signal that the filling is ready!
If you follow my crust recipe, you will need to have a 9-inch pie plate and a rolling pin to roll the crust dough. A silicone mat is really useful to prevent the dough from sticking. For the pie plate, I used a metallic one with a removable base. It allowed me to have the nice curves in the border, to have a nice browning on the bottom shell, and to remove the pie and plate it elsewhere!
You will also need a large saucepan where you can fit 600 gr of the blueberries to cook them (around 3-4 cups of blueberries) and something to press and crush the blueberries while they are cooking (like a potato masher).
Here we go with the recipe!
Awesome Blueberry Pie
Course: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Medium8
servings15
minutes1
hourThis blueberry pie is the combination of the freshness of summer with the right amount of sweetness inside a pie that you won’t get tired of it!
Ingredients
1 batch of our gluten-free pie crust recipe
(1 batch makes two crusts)1200 g blueberries
1 shredded peeled apple without the core
150 g sugar (3/4 cup aprox)
2 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp lemon juice
A pinch of salt
1 egg white lightly beaten to brush
Directions
- Take out the crusts dough from the fridge to allow them to warm a bit before rolling them.
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF/220ºC.
- Put half of the blueberries (600 g) in a large saucepan and cook them for about 8-10 minutes at medium heat. While they are cooking, crush them with a potato masher or something similar to break the blueberries and release the juices.
During the cooking time, the blueberry sauce that you are making should be reduced by half approximately or the original volume of uncrushed blueberries. - Let the reduced blueberry sauce to cool off a bit.
- Meanwhile, drain the shredded apple with a clean cloth to remove the excess of water. Incorporate the shredded apple, sugar, salt, lemon juice, cornstarch and the rest of the blueberries to the reduced blueberry sauce and mix well to homogenize everything.
- Roll in a silicone mat (or in between two plastic wrap pieces) the crust dough into a 12-inch circle. You can help yourself with a little cornstarch in the rolling pin or in the dough if it is way too sticky, but it is better not to use any.
- Place the rolled dough into the 9-inch pie plate carefully so the dough doesn’t break. Remove and discard the excess from the borders (you can use that excess if you left a part of the crust too thin comprated to the rest).
- Roll the other crust into a 12-inch circle. Cut a hole in the middle and 6 more around the center one equally distanced. (you can be creative in this part if you want 😉 )
- Fill the blueberry mixture into the already placed pie crust being careful not to overfill the borders. It will become more liquid when it is cooked and you don’t want it spilling everywhere in the oven!
- Cover your creation with the crust and press the borders to seal the pie. Remove the excess.
- Brush the top of the pie with the egg white wash so it gets a nice browning after it cooks!
- Bake in the oven middle rack at 425ºF/220ºC for 25 minutes.
- Rotate the pie and reduce the heat to 350ºF/180ºC and bake for another 40 minutes. At the 30 minute mark, be careful not to burn the pie (remember that every oven is different!). You know it is ready when the crust is golden brown and you see the blueberry filling bubbling!
- When it is ready, take out of the oven and let it cool for at least 2 hours. This will allow the filling to set and allow the crust to be firm enough so it doesn’t break.
- Now it’s time to enjoy!!
