What are You Baking the Week of July 21, 2019?

[Italiancook]

Mike, I just posted the chocolate mayo cake recipe in the recipe section.

[BakerAunt]

The recipe looks good, Italian Cook. The one I was considering appeared in the recent issue of Bake from Scratch magazine. It uses two eggs, however, and more chocolate.

I baked a blueberry pie on Saturday evening. I used the first of the two oil-pie crusts from the King Arthur Anniversary Baking Book, making the larger amount, but with a few changes inspired by the second recipe. I used ½ cup oil and ¼ cup buttermilk. I substituted in ½ cup white whole wheat flour. I used 1 tsp. salt. I used a 9-inch Emile Henry deep pie dish, and after blind-baking the crust, I sprinkled a little Panko over the bottom. For the filling, I needed one that could be partly cooked in advance, since the oil-crust needs to be baked blind, and so will be hot when I add the filling, and I wanted to avoid a top crust.

In Great Pies & Tarts, by Carole Walter (1998), a cookbook that I recently unpacked and had never used, I found “Blueberry Crumb Pie with Warm Blueberry Sauce” (pp. 192-193), The blueberries are slightly cooked in a large skillet with sugar, cornstarch, and water. She put in cinnamon, but I substituted ¼ tsp. allspice, which I prefer in blueberry pies. The berries are then removed with a slotted spoon (I used a plastic skimmer) to a 13x9 inch dish, in thirds, with tapioca sprinkled on top of each third. After 15 minutes, the filling is ready. I cut the streusel recipe in half and reduced the butter so that I only used 2 Tbs. (a scant 2 Tbs., as I’d used ½ tsp. of that butter for jam last week). I deleted the cinnamon and the walnuts. I tented the pie, as directed, with foil for the first 40 minutes, then uncovered it for 10 minutes more.

And what about the juice left from the blueberries? I followed the directions to move it to a saucepan, add water, and bring to “slow boil.” I deleted the crème de cassis or Kirschwasser, as I have none, but just added the required lemon juice. The sauce has a lovely flavor, I can testify, from licking the spoon. I’ll add a note after we cut into it on Sunday.

[BakerAunt]

The pie turned out very well indeed. It's the first time I've had a blueberry pie hold together, and the individual berries can be seen. I had reduced the sugar from 3/4 to 2/3 cups, since these blueberries we pick are particularly sweet. I'd do that again next time, along with halving the original amount of streusel, although I suspect it would by yummy with the full amount. The one thing I would do differently next time is to increase the allspice, with which I replaced the cinnamon, from 1/4 to 1/2 tsp., since I think that the pan cooking, then baking, diminished its flavor a bit.

The crust came out well and is crisp on the bottom. My husband, whose favorite pie is blueberry, is particularly pleased that I've found a way to bake it that is much lower in saturated fat. There is about 22g per pie, so if cut into sixths, that is 3.66 grams per slice, with some fiber from the whole wheat and all those blueberry antioxidants.

[Italiancook]

I can almost taste your delicious pie, BakerAunt. I've never had a blueberry pie where some of the berries were still whole.

[Author]

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