mirgraphy

So I have started doing a bit of baking again. The cold weather and the presence of someone with a very sweet tooth around means there is human garbage can  I can feed my failed attempts to.

I had my eye on Bill Granger’s recipe for Blue Berry Pie recipe from his “Feed Me Now” book for a while. Through various reasons, I never had enough butter to make the buttery pastry. I finally bought the required 360gm of butter on the weekend and out comes the rolling pin.

Blueberry pie recipe

Pastry
500g plain flour
60g icing sugar
1 pinch of sea salt
360g unsalted butter, chilled and cubed (can and should be reduced to 300g)
130 ml soured cream (I used normal cream)

Filling
500g blueberries
115g caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 tbs cornflour
2 medium egg yolks, lightly beaten (I find 1 was more than enough)
2 tbs white or demerara sugar

To serve
pouring custard, cream or vanilla ice cream

Directions
To make the pastry, sift the pastry ingredients into a bowl. Add butter and rub with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add cream and mix until dough comes together into a ball. Divide the dough in half, shape into balls and wrap each one in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before using. If you leave it for longer they turn into frozen butter balls.

Preheat the oven to 200 degree. Unwrap one pastry ball and roll out on a lightly floured surface to a 4mm thick round. Use to line a 23cm pie tin, lightly pressing the pastry into the corners, then trim the edge. Roll out the other pastry ball to a similar round and place on a board. Place the pie tin in the freezer for at least 15 minutes to set. Cover the other pastry sheet with plastic wrap and place in the fridge.

For the filling, toss the blueberries with the caster sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and cornflour. Scatter evenly in the pastry case. Brush the rum of the pastry case with egg yolk, then lay the pastry round on top to cover the pie and press the pastry edges firmly together to seal, then crimp the rim with a fork dipped in flour.

Brush the top with egg yolk, sprinkle with sugar and make 5 small incisions in the pie lid. Stand the pie tin on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 170 degrees and bake for a further 35 minutes or until golden.

Allow the pie to cool before serving with ice cream.

The end result was an incredibly buttery , almost too buttery for my liking. It took me a lot longer to bake the pie in my old electric oven and there was a point when I thought the blue berry filling would explode. Thankfully that didn’t happen and the end result was quite satisfying. Gooey and warm in the inside, crustily flaky on the outside.

I haven’t added gardening to my repertoire, but I just realised how much I missed taking my camera out and start taking photos of the most beautiful mundane objects. There is a little garden growing on a balcony sprouting baby vegetables that I have been watching for a bit. The gardener is not having much look so far and only the tiniest of vegetables are growing. Right now I have miniature carrots in my bridge, and not quite sure what to do with them…