I finally managed to break the dessert moratorium this weekend under the guise of preparing for our upcoming July 4th barbecue. Ordinarily I don't prepare for parties this far in advance, but all of A's college roommates are descending on us for the 4th with expectations of a feast, and we will be out of town the weekend before. After racking our brains for a theme, we have settled on traditional American (yeah, creative I know) and plan to serve bacon cheeseburgers with homemade buns, grilled corn, and a number of other goodies. In a few weeks I will try to get a post up featuring the entire menu with prep instructions.
On top of all that, I have an entire dessert buffet to pull together. Red velvet cupcakes and macarons are on request, but will need to be prepared just before the event. I am concerned about running out of time, so I have decided to pull together some blueberry pies just in case. Fruit pies are great for events like this where you are concerned about prep time, as they can be prepared weeks in advance and then frozen unbaked. Then you just pull them out and bake them when you need them. I have used the pre-made frozen fruit pies for Thanksgiving for years. It is the only way to serve a wide variety of pie when a multi-course family feast is on order.
The frozen mini-pie method is particularly well suited to bakers who love having homemade desserts on hand but don't have tons of people to feed. With the mini-pies, you can bake your pie one serving at a time.
After putting together all of the mini-pies, I had enough pie dough and filling left-over for a three inch version. Thank god, because wouldn't it have been tragic if I had to prep all of those pies and then had nothing to enjoy once finished? Needless to say, the "bonus" pie didn't last more than an hour. A and I devoured it... and the fatwah on desserts was over for one weekend. Though it was back in effect on Sunday, I do have the rest of the prep for the barbecue to look forward. Is it possible that me, the hater of winter and all things cold and snowy, might actually be looking forward to the holiday season?
Recipe after the jump!
Blueberry Pie
Yield: A 9 inch pie, or 24 mini pies
One pie crust
Filling
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (or more) sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 7 cups fresh wild or regular blueberries (32 ounces) or 32 ounces frozen wild or regular blueberries (do not thaw)
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Topping
- 2/3 cup unbleached all purpose flour
- 4 ounces marzipan or almond paste, broken into 1/3-inch pieces (about 3/4 cup loosely packed)
- 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Pulse the flour, sugar, salt, butter and shortening in a food processor until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add ice cold water, one tablespoon at a time, pulsing between each. Add water until the dough just begins to come together. This usually means about 4 tablespoons, but I needed 5 for this batch. Remove the dough from the processor and press it together into two balls and then flatten each into a disk. Wrap each disk with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight. Then remove the dough from refrigerator and roll each disk out into a thin crust. I like to do this on a silpat as it keeps the mess contained and also makes the dough easier to lift after rolling. Cut circles out of the rolled dough and press each circle into the bottom of a mini tart pan.
Blend the sugar and cornstarch in a large saucepan. Add the blueberries and cook over medium heat until the mixture bubbles and thickens. The juices will come out of some of the blueberries yielding a purple liquid. Chill the filling for at least an hour before using it to fill the pies.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Fill the pie crusts with the cooled blueberry compote and lay them out on a cookie sheet. The sheet is necessary to catch any spillage, as the pies will bubble when baking.
For the almond crumble, just rub all of the ingredients together in a large bowl until the butter and almond paste are well incorporated. You can use a pastry knife for this, or just rub the mixture between your fingers until the butter and almond chunks are no larger than a pea.
Cover the blueberry filled pies with a generous amount of the almond crumble. You should have enough to coat the entire top of each pie with only bits of the blueberries peeping through. At this point, you can either bake your pies or put them in the freezer for baking at a later date. I usually stick my pies in the freezer on the cookie sheet for a few hours to harden, and then transfer them to a freezer bag for long term freezing.
When you are ready for baking, bake the pies in the oven until the crust and the crumble start to brown. This will probably take about 40 minutes, but varies with each oven, so you should check your pies periodically while baking. If your pies are frozen, do not bother defrosting them - just stick them directly into the preheated oven. Baking could take up to 15-20 minutes longer if the pies are frozen.
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