By Lidl had a sale on blueberries…so I went a little crazy. There’s a reason that the expression ‘easy as pie’ exists. Especially when you ‘cheat’ and don’t make your own pie crust. I know you Martha Stewart devotees want to slap me for being lazy…but hear me out. When I have time, I will make my own pie crust. But making a crust can be messy…at least for me.
Ingredients
- 3 pints of blueberries
- 1/2 of a Lemon (for zest and juice)
- pinch of Salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 T cornstarch
- 1/2 T cinnamon
- 2 T unsalted butter
- milk
- package of pre-made pie crusts (I prefer Pillsbury, but this time around I used Lidl)
Steps
- Heat oven to 450º F.
- Bring pie crusts to room temperature (if refrigerated, about 15 minutes).
- Toss blueberries in bowl with sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon,salt.
- Zest 1/2 of a lemon and add to blueberries
- Squeeze juice from lemon onto blueberries
- Place first pie crust into pie tin (and place on baking sheet)
- Dump blueberries into the pie tin, mounding so there’s more in the center
- Cut up butter and add squares on top of blueberries
- Cover with 2nd pie crust, pinching edges to seal.
- Brush the top crust with milk. Sprinkle with sugar
- Cut 4 slits to allow steam to release
- Bake 10 minutes
- Reduce temperature to 350º F and bake for another 40-50 minutes (until pie is golden brown)
Thoughts
All the recipes I read said to use 5 cups of blueberries, which works if you’re picking blueberries. I buy my blueberries by the pint – so to me it would be easier to just use them all up. Most recipes had a range for sugar (1/2 cup to 1 cup) – so if you have a sweet tooth, then increase the sugar. Most recipes reference measurements for the lemon juice and lemon zest. My approach when I made this pan was to carefully measure to see how much was left…and then say ‘screw it’ and throw the remaining amount in (hence the reference to 1/2 a lemon). I had a spice jar full of cinnamon sugar, so I used that to shake some spices on versus just sprinkling sugar on top.
The pie was a hit (especially with vanilla ice cream). It was a little more liquid-y than I expected. I took it out of the oven at 40 minutes, so next time I will likely increase the time and slightly increase the cornstarch.
