Blueberries are coming back in season. It’s now that time of the year when you don’t have to decide whether to buy 100 g of blueberries or your next meal; you can purchase both. As the summer gets closer, blueberries will not only become cheaper, they will be more flavourful as well. I cannot wait any more, so I have decided to try my hand at making the blueberry hand pies. Hand… get it? Oh, I crack myself up.
Seriously, now.
I have already admitted my love of pie dough, and this is yet another fantastic use of it. The original recipe can be found at Anna Olsen’s YouTube channel (I cannot recommend it enough), which I modified a bit.
I will refine the recipe in two ways the next time I make these little beauties: 1) there are conflicting reports of what 2 cups of fresh blueberries weigh; I used 250 g the first time, but I think 200 g will suffice, and 2) I will chill the dough for much longer than I have–in my impatient hunger–done the first time.
Blueberry hand pies
Ingredients
- 1 quantity pie dough
- 200 g blueberries
- 100 g vanilla sugar
- 1 peeled and grated apple1
- eggwash (1 egg + 1 Tbsp milk)
Instructions
- Roll out the pastry and leave to chill for at least an hour.
- Cut the pastry in six 15 cm rounds2 and leave to chill until easy to handle, at least one hour.
- Heat the oven to 190˚C.
- Mix the filling and squash the blueberries a bit.
- Top each pastry round with about 1 heaped tablespoon of the blueberry mixture. Eggwash the edges and seal the pie. With the dull edge of a cutlery knife, make small indents in the pastry edge, to seal it together better.
- Place the filled pies in a parchment-lined baking tray. The filling will leak, so make sure it does not leak all over your oven.
- Eggwash the pies and sprinkle with some caster sugar.
- Bake for 25 to 30 min, until the pies are golden.
- Let the pies rest for about one hour before eating them. Or spit in the face of convention and enjoy the warm pies.