Blueberry Pie for Pi Day!

GranNini's Blueberry Pie

GranNini's Blueberry Pie.  Yum!!!

The wonderful thing about March, is Pi Day!  And the last two years have been spectacularly important Pi Days, because they were the two "official" pi days of this century.

Yes, 3.14159 

Last year, March 14, 2015 could be simplified as 3.14.15

And THIS year, March 14, 2016 can be simplified as 3.14.16

if you round UP, 159 rounds up to 16, thus truly making this year's Pi Day a perfection.

For this year's Pi Day, my kiddos voted for triple crust blueberry pie.  Triple crust? you ask?  Why yes!  There's a crust in the middle.  I'm not sure why having a crust in the middle is so yummo, because sometimes it simply looks a bit like a gooey mess, but for some reason, it adds another layer of fantasmic yummo tastiness, that we can't resist!

GranNini's Blueberry Pie is best served one of two ways.  Hot and steamy, fresh out of the oven with a healthy dollop of French Vanilla Ice Cream.  OR, left over, cold and crisp, fresh out of the fridge. And, shhhhh, don't tell, with ice cream.  For breakfast.

A couple quick notes about my berry pies.

1.  I pick my berries in the summer, wash them, pop off all the stems and unpleasant bits, dry them out on my kitchen table, and then freeze them, laying flat, in ziplock bags in my deep freezer.  By the end of the summer, I have bags upon bags upon bags of blueberries filling up the shelves.  

2.  When it's time to make pie, I simply dump out the berries into an extra large glass bowl, and pop the whole thing in the microwave for about 3 minutes or so.  It's fine for the berries to still be a little frozen.  However, you'll need to lengthen your baking time.  I prefer the berries to be fully thawed, and if I think ahead enough, I'll set them out in the morning.  But evening, they're thawed and ready for mixing.  As the berries thaw, they become wet.  That's just fine.  The ingredients for the pie innards will take care of that.  I have found that the more thawed, and less frozen the berries are, the more gooey the pie innards.  Which, I personally prefer.

3.  I love the Ikea extra large glass bowls for just such an occasion -- they're the perfect size and the price is right!

4.  For strawberries, I have a whole different procedure for freezing.  I wash and cut my strawberries.  When there's a rather large bowl of them, I spoon the strawberries and their juices into snack sized zippy bags.  Then I fill a gallon freezer sized zippy bag with all my mini snack sized zippy bags.  I pop these out when I need them for smoothies, and dump the whole frozen clump into my blender when I'm ready to use them.  I tend not to make strawberry rhubarb pie except in the summer, and then I use fresh berries, rather than frozen strawberries.  But that's just my preference.

5.  And whilst I'm rambling, I thought I'd mention that I rarely, if ever, freeze blackberries or raspberries.  Costco sells a berry mixture (several, really) in their frozen section, and it works splendidly for smoothies.  It costs just a wee bit more than buying the berries fresh -- and is infinitely less time consuming than buying berries (or picking them!), washing, drying, culling them, and freezing them.  Save yourself some trouble.  If I want a blackberry pie, I use fresh blackberries.  But I prefer blackberry roll-up, where you make a heavier pie crust hybrid with a scone / biscuit dough, roll it out into a rectangle, spread the berries on top, roll it out, and brush with sugar and bake.  If you're interested, I'll make a post about that too.  But for now, let's focus on blueberry pie.

So here you go, my recipe for triple crust blueberry pie.

I am a loyal fan of the 1953 edition of the Joy of Cooking's berry pie recipe.  I adapted it a wee bit, but here's what I use.

Recipe

3 unbaked pie crusts

6 cups of thawed blueberries

1 cup sugar

4 Tablespoons flour

2 Tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca (*yes, I said TABLESPOONS)

1 1/2 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter (*set aside)

Directions:

Line a pie plate with unbaked pie crust.  

(If you need a recipe, and instructions, simply click here: GranNini's Pie Crust.)  

In a large glass bowl, place six cups of thawed, washed and stemmed blueberries.  If they're not thawed, they will make your berry pie runny, not gooey and yummy, and delicious.  Trust me on this.

Stir in sugar, flour, dry tapioca, and lemon juice.  Stir the berries gently until all the ingredients are evenly coating the berries, and the berries appear "wet" rather than berries-coated-in-flour-sugar-mixture.

Pour 2/3 of your berries into the bottom of your pie plate.  

Cut 1 Tablespoon of butter into very thin chunks, and dot the top of your berries with the butter.

Place a second pie crust (the shape of a circle -- no need to go back up the sides of the pie plate) on top of your berries.

Pour the remaining 1/3 of your berries on top of the 2nd pie crust, and dot the top of the berries with your remaining butter.

Gently place a top pie crust over the entire pie.  Crimp your edges to help retain the berries and prevent too much oozing.  Decorate as desired.  Poke a few holes on the top to let out the steam, and to help you determine when your pie has finished baking.

Bake at 350˚ for 50 minutes to 1 hour, checking frequently to determine when the pie has finished baking.  You are looking for a dark blue/purple, THICK, bubbly goodness leaking out of the top or out of the sides.  If the liquid is THIN, the pie isn't quite gooey enough and isn't done on the inside.  Don't hesitate to keep the pie in much longer than you thought.  Keep an eye on the outside crust not to allow it to get too dark.  But I have found that by baking at a slightly lower temperature, and baking a bit longer, makes all the difference with creating an ooey gooey tasty pie.

When your pie has sufficiently oozed out a dark, thick, gooey purple goodness, pop it out of the oven and onto a cooking rack.  Don't be surprised if it oozes onto your counters.  You may wish to clean up any spills rather quickly, because berries do tend to stain.  

I usually allow my pies to cool and rest for ten minutes or so because (a) I like to torture my family with the lovely smells (b) 🎤an-ti-ci-pa-tion🎤 -- yes, I know that's the ketchup song from my childhood, but that "catchy" aka "annoying" jingle makes me reminisce as I torture my family with the yummo smells of pie.  (c) Letting the pie rest somehow allows all the flavors to evolve.  The liquid solidifies a bit more into a jelly, and the pie will just taste oh, so much better.

Once your pie has set, simply slice, plop on a big dollop of French vanilla ice cream (or two!), and serve!!  Mmmmmmm.  Yummo pie!!!

For those of you who like pictures, here you go! 

 Here you can see the middle crust peeking through a bit under my berry mixture.  Oh, and you can see sometimes my "3 Tablespoons of butter" is a bit slightly under-exaggerated.  I can be a bit liberal with my butter.  Probably why I'm squishy.  But alas, it does make for a tasty pie.

 Here's my pie right before I popped it into the oven.  My little pin prick holes turned out to be a wee bit too small.  My pie didn't vent as well as I would have liked, so it burbled out the sides.  I recommend slightly larger holes than the ones I have here.

NOT quite done yet.  Yes, the pie is slightly golden brown, but you can't see any of the deep purple (oh dear, now I've got Donny & Marie in my head!) bubbly goodness.

Same pie from the sides -- you can't see bubbly goodness quite yet.  Needs about 10 more minutes.

Okay!  There it is!!   If you look closely to the pie plate, you can see the deep purple bubbly goodness running over.   Yes, the inside of my oven is a mess.  But it was worth it.  You can also see the pie crust on top of the sliced piece is nice and golden, without being burnt.  Probably could have used another 3 or 4 minutes to set in the pie plate, but I was drooling by then.  Just needs ice cream, and off to the old tummy it goes!

mmmmmmmm.  Pie.

Now I'm off to go make snickerdoodles with the remaining unbaked pie crusts.  Snickerdoodles? you ask?  Why yes!  If you're intrigued, click here for the Snickerdoodles recipe.

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Find other tasty Thanksgiving Dinner dishes here:

And tasty pie recipes here:

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I not only bake and cook, I write murder mysteries too!

Both books are available in paperback and kindle versions

Diamonds for Diamond 
(Book 1 in the Jack Diamond Mystery series)
and
No One Noticed

(Book 2 in the Jack Diamond Mystery Series)