Elle's Fresh Blueberry Pie #FridayPieDay

Fresh blueberries are the star of this pie, stirred through with a sweet berry glaze and then piled into a crispy, flakey pie crust. 

It’s been just over two years since the blogging community got the terrible news that one of our special friends, Lee Ann known to us all as Elle of Elle’s Kitchen had passed away. We pulled together to celebrate her life by choosing recipes to cook from her blog and had a great big Ellapalooza party. If you’ve been reading this space for that long you might remember that I shared a one of Lee Ann’s delicious cocktails, a Moscow Mule. What you couldn’t know is that the refreshing Mule won out over this fresh blueberry pie by just a nose. It’s been on my to-make list too long but since it's a sad anniversary of sorts and the blueberries were on sale this week at my local supermarket, it seemed like the right time to make it and remember Elle. We all still miss her.

Ingredients
Dough for a one crust pie 
1 egg white
1 cup or 150g frozen berry blend (I used a mix called Black Forest fruit.)
4 cups or 630g fresh blueberries
1/2 cup or 120ml water
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon water
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pinch salt

Method
Wash the blueberries and spin them dry gently in a salad spinner and lightly beat the egg white.

Heat oven to 375°F or 190°C. Line the pie pan with the crust dough, and then cover with a piece of parchment paper. Fill the bottom of the parchment with dried beans or baking beads. Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the crust from oven, then remove the parchment and beans. Brush the crust with the egg white, and then bake until golden brown, about 5-8 minutes. Set on a rack to cool.

While the crust is baking and then cooling, prepare the filling. In a small saucepan, heat the frozen berries, and the 1/2 cup or 120ml of water. Bring to a boil.

While that's coming to a boil, whisk the cornstarch and remaining (2 tbsp plus 1 tsp) water in a small bowl. Stir well and set aside. When the fruit and water come to a boil, turn it down to a simmer and stir for 3 to 4 minutes.

Whisk in the sugar, cornstarch mixture, lemon juice and salt.

Turn the heat up a little bit and keep whisking until the fruit mixture thickens and becomes a gorgeous glossy thick fruity gel.

Remove the gel from the heat.  In a large bowl, stir the gel with the fresh berries.

Spoon into the baked crust, then let it sit for at least 2 hours before cutting into it.

Enjoy!

This fresh blueberry pie is my contribution to this month's Friday Pie Day, the brilliant creation of Heather from All Roads Lead to the Kitchen. (Formerly girlichef.)

I am pleased to join her on the last Friday of each month for pie and crust recipes, techniques, tools of the trade, and other inspiration.

This month Heather made an easy lobster pie. Doesn't that sounds divine?

For more information and recipes, please check out her #FridayPieDay page!

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The Impossible (Coconut) Pie #FoodieExtravaganza

Plenty of eggs, milk and coconut, with just a little flour, this pie makes its own crust as it bakes. Impossible, you say? I don’t know how but it works!

Just about six years ago, I saved a recipe on the internet. By which I mean, I copied the text and the URL and put them both in a Word doc and filed it under Recipes/Sweet in my computer. I have no idea what original search brought me to The Impossible Pie, but the title intrigued me. The original recipe was on a .au registered website written by a man named Gourmet Jack, which no longer seems to be in operation, more’s the pity. He had a sense of humor and some great recipes there, as I recall.

As you all know, baking more pies has been one of my recent personal resolutions for the last few months, starting with joining FridayPieDay back in May last year. Well, things are about to get serious this month! I am starting out today with The Impossible Pie for Foodie Extravaganza and I’ll have at least two more pies for you in February, once again for Friday Pie Day and then on the last Sunday of the month, Sunday Supper is celebrating pies, both sweet and savory. And who knows what else in between once the momentum gets going. I can hardly wait!

But first, to the pie at hand. This guy is rather like coconut custard, but it's got the soft texture of a cheesecake, without the cheese, of course. Parts of it are almost flan-like. The side crust and top are golden and buttery, perfectly complementing the tender interior. Hats off to Gourmet Jack, wherever he is! I’ve made a few adaptations, like adding a little baking powder and doubling the coconut, but this one is still unmistakably his.

Ingredients
4 large eggs
2 cups or 475ml cold milk
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1/2 cup or 65g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup or 60g butter, plus extra for buttering the pie plate.
1/2 teapoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups or 230g sweetened flaked coconut

Method
Preheat your the oven to 350ºF or 180°C and prepare your 9.5in or 24cm deep dish pie plate by greasing it liberally with butter. The deep dish is essential. If all you have are shallow pie pans, use this recipe to make two thinner pies.

Put all the ingredients in blender, except the coconut. I suggest putting the eggs in first and the flour in last so you don't end up with a clump of flour stuck to the bottom below the blades of your blender.

Blend at high speed until thoroughly mixed. Gourmet Jack says to count to 10 and it's done.

Add in the coconut and blend again for a few seconds.

Pour the mixture into your buttered deep dish pie plate.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until edges and top are golden brown. The very middle will still be a little bit jiggly when you take it out of the oven, just like a cheesecake, if you’ve ever baked one of those. It's really puffy when it first comes out.

Cool completely on wire rack before attempting to slice and lift out of the pie plate.

The pie firms up nicely as it cools. The top also sinks down, but don't let that bother you.

It occurs to me that it's been a very long time since I've shown you a photo of my furry helper. Both in the kitchen and for every photo shoot, he's always supervising. And looking out for fallen food so he can help clean up. He's a very tidy Boxer.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to our Foodie Extravaganza host today, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Without her pie promptings, this Impossible Pie would still be languishing in the archives of my computer recipe files, saved for nothing two computers and three countries ago. And what a shame that would be!

Check out all the other lovely pies we have for you today, both savory and sweet!

• BLT Pie by Georgina of G'Gina's Flavors Palatte
• Cheddar Leek Potato Pie by Lauren at Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Cheeseburger Pie by Kathleen at Fearlessly Creative Mammas
• Grapefruit Pie by Rebekah at Making Miracles
• Ham and Broccoli Quiche by Wendy at A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Homegrown Blackberry Pie by Carlee of Cooking with Carlee
• No Bake Peanut Butter Pie by Lauren of From Gate to Plate
• Peaches and Cream Pie by Elaine at Cookin and Craftin
• Penne Pie by Terri at Our Good Life
• Red Velvet Pudding Pie by Teri of The Freshman Cook
• Tar Heel Pie by Tara of Tara's Multicultural Table
• The Impossible (Coconut) Pie by Stacy of Food Lust People Love
• Walnut Crumble-Topped Apple Tart by Caroline at Caroline's Cooking

Foodie Extravaganza celebrates obscure food holidays or shares recipes with the same ingredient or theme every month.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook group Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you!

If you're a reader looking for delicious recipes, check out our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board! Looking for our previous parties? Check them out here.

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Sausage Apple Onion Tart #FridayPieDay

The apples and sausages go together beautifully, as pork and apples are wont to do, with the lovely added flavor of baked onions, in a crisp, golden puff pastry crust.  

The beauty of pies and tarts is that they can be sweet or savory. If you aren’t much of a dessert person, you can still enjoy a delicious pie, just add some sausage or salami. This month’s Friday Pie Day tart makes the perfect brunch, lunch or dinner fare and the ingredients are easily changed out for whatever you might have on hand.

I started by making my rough puff pastry recipe, or rather, I should say, Gordon Ramsey’s rough puff pastry recipe, cut off a little more than half and wrapped up the rest and popped it in the freezer. If you haven’t attempted rough puff before, I recommend you try it. It’s easy and way less work that actual puff pastry. In a pinch, of course, you can use store-bought puff pastry.

Ingredients
1 green apple (for example, Granny Smith)
2 teaspoons canola or other light oil
2 medium purple onions
6 fat sausages (about 14 oz or 400g)
A few fresh tender sprigs thyme – or leaves off of older sprigs
12 1/3 oz or 350g rough puff pastry dough from this recipe
2 tablespoons whole grain mustard

Method
Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Cut the apple in half, core it and cut it into thin slices, discarding the very end pieces that are all peel. Toss the apple slices in a medium sized bowl, with the oil to stop them turning brown.

Peel the onions, cut them in half and then slices them into thin wedges.

Toss them in the bowl with the apples.

Add the thyme sprigs, ripped into smaller pieces.

Cut the sausages into bite-sized pieces with a sharp knife of a pair of scissors. Mix the pieces in with the apples and onions.

Roll out your rough puff pastry into a large rectangle and trim the edges to make sure it will puff up successfully.

Gently score a line all the way around the inside with the tip of a sharp knife. This will be your puffy, crunchy crust, so don’t be skimpy with the margin.

Spread your mustard all over inside the scored line.

Tip the sausage, apple and onion onto the pastry and arrange it as evenly as possible all the way out to the scored line.

It's a pretty tall pile but it will bake down, I promise.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden and the sausage pieces are cooked through.

Allow to cool slightly before cutting.

Enjoy!

This sausage apple onion tart is my contribution to this month's Friday Pie Day, the brilliant creation of Heather from All Roads Lead to the Kitchen. (Formerly girlichef.)

I am pleased to join her on the last Friday of each month for pie and crust recipes, techniques, tools of the trade, and other inspiration.

For more information and recipes, please check out her #FridayPieDay page!

Dark Chocolate Orange Crostata #FridayPieDay

A traditional combination, especially around the Christmas holidays, orange marmalade and dark chocolate melt together to create a rich dessert tart that is perfect for a dinner party or a special family feast. I recommend serving it sliced thinly with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream or unsweetened whipped cream. 

All these years as an expat, I’ve missed Thanksgiving at home with extended family, but especially in the early years, it was all good. We didn’t have aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins around, but we had each other. Creating our own traditions together, celebrating as a small nuclear family, bonded us perhaps more tightly than we would have been in different circumstances. Indeed, moving to new countries without friends or even familiar faces, we had only each other to rely on for entertainment or comfort. At least until friends were made. Making a home out of each new house in each new place was how I made sure my girls felt safe but the truth is, that's also what kept me sane.

We’ve only lived in one foreign country where Thanksgiving was a school holiday for our girls and that’s just because in Singapore they attended the Singapore American School. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves! We were used to celebrating our own Thanksgiving on the Saturday after the actual holiday and suddenly Thursday was open. Well, for the girls anyway. It was still a normal work day for their father. Ah, well.

This year we’ve decided to do something completely different. Our girls are celebrating Thanksgiving with friends and family in the States, but as you read this, my husband and I are probably soaking up the sun and sea view in the Seychelles. It’s just a few hours’ flight from Dubai and since we can’t have a family Thanksgiving, we might as well make the best of it! Meanwhile, I leave you with this lovely crostata, which is just a fancy Italian way of saying tart.

This recipe is adapted from one on Real Simple.

Ingredients
For the dough:
2 1/3 cups or 290g flour, plus extra for rolling out dough
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 170g unsalted butter
2 large egg yolks
Ice water – 4 tablespoons to start then maybe 2 more

For the filling:
3 1/2 oz or 100g dark chocolate
1 1/2 cups or 450g orange marmalade

Method
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Cut the cold butter into cubes and add them to the flour. Use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour until you have crumbles.

Add the egg yolks and 4 tablespoon of cold water. Mix it up lightly with a fork.

Add one or two more tablespoons of cold water, mixing again until the dough just comes together. (I did take photos of these steps for you but they were blurry. Perhaps due to excess flour on the camera. Poor Canon. Unfortunately my furry helper is useless at taking photos for me.)

Form the dough into a disk. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.

Meanwhile preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and line a cookie sheet with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Chop the chocolate into small pieces.

Roll 2/3 of the dough out into a circle of about 14 in or 36cm on the parchment paper or silicone mat.

Spoon the marmalade in the middle. Sprinkle chocolate over the top. There will be some chocolate crumbs and dust left on the cutting board. Set it aside to save these for sprinkling over the finished crostata.

Roll the remaining dough out to the same thickness as the bottom crust and slice it into strips.

Place them in a crisscross pattern over the marmalade/chocolate.

Carefully fold the sides up and over the crisscross and up to the marmalade, patting the folds down gently to seal.

Bake until lightly golden, about 40-45 minutes. Remove the crostata from the oven.

Use the blade of a knife to scrape up the crumbs of chocolate from the cutting board and sprinkle these over the warm crostata.

Allow the crostata to cool completely on a wire rack before attempting to move or cut it. You will see that it's still a bit jiggly until it's cold and the chocolate has set once more.

Once cool, cut in slices and serve. This goes really well with vanilla ice cream or unsweetened whipped cream.

Enjoy!

This dark chocolate orange crostata is my contribution to this month's Friday Pie Day, the brilliant creation of Heather from All Roads Lead to the Kitchen. (Formerly girlichef.)

I am pleased to join her on the last Friday of each month for pie and crust recipes, techniques, tools of the trade, and other inspiration.

This month Heather has baked a cranberry apple crumb pie! Wouldn't that be perfect for Christmas too? Do go over and have a look.

For more information and recipes, please check out her #FridayPieDay page!

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Black Forest Fruit Pie #BloggerCLUE

With a lovely mix of dark fruit and a flakey crumbly crust, this delicious pie is both tart and sweet and, as the British say, goes down a treat. My husband says to tell you to serve this with thick pouring cream. Consider yourself told.

Let me start by saying that the best piecrusts are flakey. If we can all agree on that, then I will feel better about the right mess this pie became as I tried to serve it up. I mean, really. Look at it on the pie.

Not too bad, right? Then look again at that cut piece. Deep sigh. But that just goes to show you that it’s extra flakey, which means absolutely perfect. It's a special recipe from from A Spoonful of Thyme, written by the very talented Kathy, another of member of the Blogger C.L.U.E. Society. If you'd like to try it yourself, here's the recipe link.

This month our Blogger C.L.U.E. Society is hunting through our partner blogs for pie recipes or other deliciousness appropriate for Thanksgiving ahead of the upcoming holidays. My assignment was Making Miracles, written by mother extraordinaire, Rebekah. Mere weeks ago, her 16-year-old son suffered a stroke and Rebekah has been keeping it all together in a way that inspires awe. I am delighted to report that he is recovering well and asking for his mama’s mac and cheese, so that is a very good sign!

Rebekah’s blog is full of great pie recipes, like her Hot Buttered Rum Apple Pie, which sounds perfect for fall. Given our still warm weather, I was tempted by her key lime pie and chocolate peanut butter refrigerator pie, but the decision was easy when I came to the one she calls Super Easy and Delicious Mixed Berry Pie. It starts with frozen fruit! And it is piled into the crust still frozen! Seriously, what could be easier?

Note: If you are feeding a crowd, Rebekah also has a Mixed Berry Slab Pie that you should check out. The same great pie in a size to feed the multitudes!

Ingredients

1 double piecrust dough (recipe of your choice - I used this one.)
1 1/2 lbs or 680g frozen mixed berries (about 5+ cups) (I used Black Forest Fruits which are a mix of blackberries, dark cherries, currants and grapes.)
1/2 cup or 100g sugar + 1 teaspoon (separated)
1/4 cup or 35g cornstarch
Large pinch salt

Method
Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Put your frozen fruit in a large mixing bowl and pour on the 1/2 cup or 100g sugar, cornstarch and pinch of salt. Stir well and leave to sit for at least 15 minutes while you roll out your piecrust.

I use one of these handy zippery thing to roll out my pie crust. I bought it one thousand years ago from the King Arthur website but, lucky for you, they still have them.

Fit the bottom crust into the pie plate and sprinkle it with 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. Trim the edges so they are even. Scissors work great for this.

Give the fruit another good stir to loosen the pieces up. Mine became frozen together despite being separate when they went into the bowl. Tip the fruit into the bottom crust and spread it around evenly.

Cover with the top crust dough and crimp the edges to seal. I also cut out little hearts with a cookie cutter and then used little cut out dough hearts from the dough scraps to decorate the top. But you do you.

Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of sugar on top.

Cover the edges with foil to keep them from burning and bake in your preheated oven for 50 minutes.

Tip: A pan or piece of foil under the pie plate will also save on oven clean up in case some sticky juice boils over. Didn’t happen to me this time but it’s a worthwhile precaution whenever you are baking something juicy.

Remove the foil from the crust and bake for another 50 minutes. Remove the pie from the oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack before attempting to cut it.

Enjoy!

Check out all the pies and other wonderfulness from my Blogger C.L.U.E. Society members:

• Aunt Orlean's Pie Dough by Stacy from Food Lust People Love
• Bacon and Leek Quiche by Sue from A Palatable Pastime
• Black Forest Fruit Pie by Stacy from Food Lust People Love
• Brownie Pecan Pie by Christiane from Taking on Magazines
• Butterfinger Pie by Rebekah from Making Miracles
• Cast Iron Apple Pie by Lisa from Suburban Gourmet
• Cauliflower and Leek Quiche by Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie by Aly from Cooking in Stilettos
• Classic Pumpkin Pie by Jean from Lemons and Anchovies
• Fig and Caramelized Onion Crostini by Christy from Confessions of a Culinary Diva
• Five Spice Apple Pie by Kate from Kate's Kitchen
• French Silk Pie with Frangelico by Christiane from Taking on Magazines
• Lemon Almond Cake by Azmina from Lawyer Loves Lunch
• Lemon Icebox Pie by Kathy from A Spoonful of Thyme
• Pumpkin Caramel Sea Salt Blondies by Heather from All Roads Lead to the Kitchen
• Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie by Kelli from Kelli's Kitchen
• Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream by Debra from Eliot's Eats
• Roasted Butternut Squash Dip by Anna from annaDishes
• Semisweet Chocolate Tart with Candied Pistachios by Liz from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Southern Buttermilk Pie by Lora from Cake Duchess
• Vegan Blueberry Cranberry Mini Cashew Icebox Cheesecakes by Kim from Liv Life

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