Half-Baked Blueberry Pie

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Are you enjoying the end of a lovely blueberry season as much as I am?
Two years ago this blueberry pie recipe was making it's way around the blogs I was reading. People were raving about how amazing it was. And the trick was that part of the blueberries were cooked (giving you the amazing depth of flavour you get in a baked blueberry pie) and then uncooked blueberries were folded into the cooked mix (giving you the tart, juicy, incredibly fresh flavour you get in those blueberry tartlets). To me that sounded like the best of both worlds. But by the time I had some time to give it a go all I found were super expensive blueberries from Namibia (or wherever they grow blueberries in the winter). And then I forgot about it. Until I was confronted with boxes upon boxes of blueberries. I tried to trace down the blog where I first read about the recipe but I was unsuccessful but I found the post things seem to have originated from (on Shockingly Delicious). And then I changed everything....
I used Elana's gluten-free tart crust recipe but if you don't like almonds, just make a standard one or buy one. For the filling I used ground chia seeds as a thickener because I read about that the other night and wanted to give it a go, but if you can't find any or if you don't like them, the original recipe uses cornflour so just follow that recipe. And lastly, I used agave syrup and stevia as my sweeteners but if you want to use sugar, again, have a look at the original recipe.

Half Baked Blueberry Pie
-Elana's Tart Crust (from Elana's Pantry)
200g Almond Flour
1/2 tsp Sea Salt
2 tbsp Coconut Oil
1 Egg

-Blueberry filling
500g Blueberries
150 ml Water
3 tbsp Chia Seeds
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
Stevia (equivalent to 2 tsp sugar, I find when I use more it becomes too sweet)
1 tbsp Agave Syrup
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 tbsp Lime Juice

To make the crust:
Preheat your oven to 165˚C.
Mix all ingredients together. Elana suggest pulsing them in a food processor. I ended up kneading the mix together with my hands because I only have one of those hand blender sticks and while they're amazing for lots of things - pulsing dry ingredients is not their forte.
Pat the dough into a 23cm/9inch flan dish and bake for 10-15 minutes (mine needed the whole 15 minutes).
Allow the pie crust to cool before you fill it.

To make the blueberry filling:
Mix the water, chia seeds, salt, and cinnamon in a saucepan  and bring to a boil. Add 250 g of the blueberries and and heat until the blueberries are heated through. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Next you need a hand blender stick or a blender that is ok with high temperatures. Blend the mixture until it is smooth. By doing this you not only get a really pretty filling for the pie but, in my opinion, more importantly the chia seeds end up broken down into little pieces and you are less likely to have chia seeds stuck to your teeth after eating the pie :)
Add the stevia, agave syrup, vanilla extract and lime juice, then fold in another 150 g of the blueberries.
Pour the blueberry mixture into the cold pie crust and distribute the blueberries evenly within the mix. Top with the remaining blueberries (100g), cover with cling film, and refrigerate for a few hours. This allows the filling to become slightly less liquid.

When you are ready to serve the pie, allow it to come back to room temperature and then serve it with sour cream, ice cream or whipped cream (can you detect a trend here?). We had it with sour cream at our lab lunch today and I was a big fan of that combination.

I hope you have a fantastic end of your week!

Summer Fruit Tartlets

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I had a rather fabulous dinner with Anna and Preston the other day. We started off with some mussels followed by some really nice salmon with a pistachio crust (you'll get that recipe at some point, I promise!) and then ended it with some fruit tartlets.
Anna and I have made those tartlets on several occasions now and I am in love with them because they are so easy to make, look super pretty and are the perfect end to any meal (yes, the last leftover one was a very lovely end to my breakfast of cinnamon toast crunch yesterday).
I used blackberries and peaches this time, but they are really nice just with blackberries, or apple slices, or cherries, pretty much whatever fruit you have sitting around in your kitchen.

Summer Fruit Tartlets
For the pastry:
90g Wholegrain Spelt Flour
40g Buckwheat Flour
40g Fine Cornmeal (not cornflour, but more like super fine polenta)
50g Butter (refrigerated)
30g Coconut Oil (refrigerated)
1/2 tsp Sugar
A Pinch of Salt
Some Ice Water

For the filling:
Enough fruit to fill 12 mini-tartlets i.e.
24 Blackberries
or 12 Blackberries and 1 Peach
or 1 large Cooking Apple

Some more coconut oil to grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

We are going to make a pastry dough using a method called fraisage (if you're completely lost, have a look at the explanation at Have Kinves, Will Cook). So all you need to do is, mix the flours, sugar and salt, cut in the fats into hazelnut-sized pieces and then rub them into the four mixture until you have pea-sized pieces. You'll want to do this very quickly because otherwise the fat will melt (and the fat is what makes the dough flaky). Bind the dough with some ice water (one or two tablespoons should be enough for this dough) and scrape it together into a shaggy lump.
Now, take a piece of dough and smear it over a floured work-surface. Stare at the lovely thin layer of butter that is now embedded in the flour for a second before you repeat the process with the rest of the dough. Then you shape into a rectangular lump (it doesn't have to be perfect but i find having something to work with makes rolling out the dough a lot easier later) and refrigerate the pastry for at least an hour.

Preheat your oven to 220˚C.

Get the fruit ready - wash whatever needs to be washed, if I'm using peaches, I peel them (stick them into boiling water for 5 minutes, then into an ice-bath, and the skin should easily come off) and then I normally simmer them in a syrup (two parts sugar, one part water) for a couple of minutes. If I use berries, I sometimes only sprinkle them with sugar.

Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.
Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out thinly - think 3 mm max. Then cut out 12 round pieces - I use a 6cm cookie cutter, but a glass will work just as fine.
Line each cup with a piece of pastry. You will want to push them in so they are at the bottom of the cup but don't push them in too much or they won't want to come out in one piece.
Fill each pastry with some fruit, sprinkle with some sugar or spices if you feel like it and then bake them for about 20 minutes. I tend to check every couple of minutes towards the end, depending on how much fruit is in the tartlets they will look nice and crisp and fully baked a few minutes sooner or later, so keep checking.

Allow the tartlets to cool slightly on a wire rack and enjoy them with some coffee or ice-cream and a really good conversation :)

Rhubarb Lattice Tart

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I know, it's been a while - I've been busy with writing, running, eating, swimming, sleeping, and a Buffy marathon (ok, if I'm perfectly honest not necessarily in that order) and I kinda stopped doing anything else.
So now that I finally feel like I'm on track with my writing again (and Spike saved the world :) ) I thought I could share a tart recipe with you. I made this tart for a dinner last week and I must say that I am slightly in love with this recipe. It all started with Oliver Peyton's Rhubarb Lattice Tart which looked amazing (the book - British Baking is gorgeous in general) but I never quite understood everyone's obsession with plain flour when making a dough that brings out the flavours of all it's ingredients (and we've had this bag of rye flour sitting around for a while now, and rhubarb and rye both start with r...ok, I'm just making up random reasons now).
Anyhow, I wasn't disappointed, the subtle sweetness of the rye flour brought out the flavour of the rhubarb without being overpowering.
The dough takes some time because you'll want to rest it a couple of times before you actually get to the point of filling the tart but the actual hands-on time for this tart is about 20 minutes. So I'd say it's the perfect desert if you're trying to get some writing done and don't have a clue what to bring to that dinner party later that night.
Oh, and I used a 24cm flan dish.

Rhubarb Lattice Tart
150g Plain Flour
100g Rye Flour
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Salt
175g Butter, cold, cut into 1cm pieces
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
Some really cold Water

500g Rhubarb (trimmed)
200g Sugar
2 tbsp Cornflour
A pinch of Salt

Mix the flours, sugar and salt in a bowl, then rub the butter into the dry ingredients. Just like with a normal pie dough you'll want the butter pieces to remain fairly large - think the size of a pea - because the water evaporating from those pieces of butter will turn the whole thing into flaky pastry goodness once you bake the dough.
Now you add the vinegar and about 8 tbsp of the water to the mix and start working everything together. You don't want a super-well mixed dough at this stage, you just want everything to come together in something resembling a lump. If you can't get the mix you have to hold together because it's too dry, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time.
Wrap the ball of dough in some cling-film (you can sprinkle the whole thing with a tiny bit of water before you wrap it) and let it rest in the fridge for at leas an hour (i.e. you can go and do some work now).
When you get back, unwrap the dough and place it on a floured surface and squeeze it into the shape of a rectangle before you start rolling it out with a rolling pin.
Don't worry if the dough starts out being slightly awkward to handle and bits and pieces falling off. This will get better in a couple of minutes.
Roll out the dough until it's about 20x30 cm in size.
Now fold the dough into thirds. I really like  Kim's explanation of this - she suggests you fold the dough like you would fold a letter. Once you've done that, rotate the dough by 90˚ and roll it out again.
Repeat the folding and rolling until you have folded the dough 3 times.
I guess you could skip the following step but I tend to prefer working with chilled pastry dough so I suggest you give the dough rectangle another hour or so in the fridge and get on with some more work :)
Cut the dough in half and stick one half straight back into the fridge.
Grease your flan dish.
Roll out the other half until it's big enough to line the flan dish.
Cover the lined flan dish with cling-film and chill it for another half an hour or so which will give you time to get the rhubarb ready.
Preheat your oven to 200˚C.
In a bowl combine the sugar, cornflour and salt.
Cut the rhubarb into 3cm pieces and toss them in the cornflour-sugar mixture.
Now take the flan dish out of the fridge and fill it with the rhubarb mix.
Do you remember that spare piece of pastry?
Take it out of the fridge and roll it out until it's about as thin as the other piece was before. Cut the pastry into 1cm strips and weave them into a lattice pattern covering the rhubarb. If you have some strips left at the end you can use them later to cover the lattice ends.
If you feel like it brush the lattice with an egg-wash (I tend to be lazy and just go for milk) then cover the rim with the spare pastry strips. They also like the egg-wash :)
Bake the tart for 45-55 minutes and allow it to cool before you remove it from the flan dish.
Serve by itself, with some custard, or some ice cream and a good gossip with some lovely people.