So I’m a math geek. And I love baking. When those two collide, it’s like the best of both worlds! I first found out about Pi Day sometime in my middle school days where our math teacher suggested we have a day dedicated to the greek letter pi and the yummy, delicious baked pie. Pi is also the math constant that you use to determine the circumference of a circle based on its radius and it’s an irrational number, meaning it has an infinite number of decimal points.But enough of math, the first few digits of pi are 3.14159265… and we celebrate it on March 14 cause 3-14! However, this only works in the US since most other countries write dates day-month. It truly was to my disappointment when I spent Pi Day abroad one year and my roommates didn’t know what it was – so I made them a pie too.And well, this year, in honor of Pi Day, I made mini blueberry pies! I was hesitant to bake a giant pie for myself to feast on, so what better than 4 mini pies, with perfect portioning and less mess?? Seriously, blueberry pies are some of the easiest pies ever! There’s the flakiest pie crust ever and a mild blueberry filling to top it off. This is made entirely from scratch and with no more than 5 ingredients if you please! And it took less than 30 minutes of hands-on time!I like to use simple ingredients that are easy to find in the kitchen, so I’ve used frozen organic blueberries. It’s great to keep frozen berries on hand, especially when it’s off-berry season and you’re still craving blueberries.
Mini Blueberry Pies
This small batch of mini pies is perfect for a quick dessert after a meal! Or even just a snack for two.
Servings: 4 mini pies
Cost: $3
Ingredients
Crust
- 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 pinch of salt and sugar
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
- 3 Tbsp chilled water
Filling
- 1 cup frozen organic blueberries
- 1 tsp lemon juice (squeezed from fresh lemons)
- 1/4 tsp lemon zest (optional)
- 3 Tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp flour
Instructions
- In a small bowl, whisk the flour and salt together. Add sugar if you would like a sweeter crust. But just a dash is enough.
- Put the butter pieces into the flour mixture and coat them well. Using your hands, break up the butter pieces between your fingers, pressing them so they flatten out and break apart. Do this until all the butter pieces are super flaky. Tip: make sure butter is always coated with flour so your fingers don’t get so sticky.
- Make a little well within the flour mixture. This creates a little bowl to hold the chilled water and prevent the flour from sticking to the bowl too much. With your hands, knead the flour mixture gently to incorporate the water one spoonful at a time. If the dough is still falling apart, add spoonfuls of water until it comes together. If the dough is too sticky, add a bit more flour.
- Chill the dough for 1 hour. Dough is easier to handle and remains flakier, since the dough will remain in tack.
- Grease 4 cupcake tin holders.
- One hour later, take the dough out and divide it into 4 pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into circles, about 1/8 inch thick, and wide enough to fit within a cupcake tin. Place the rolled out dough in the cupcake molds and readjust the crust to fit, cutting out any excess dough that overflows. Refrigerate again for another 15 min. Turn on the oven to 350°F.
- Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Mix in all the filling ingredients until combined.
- Divide out the filling into each mini crust. Be careful to only fill 3/4 of the way because the crust will shrink and the filling can boil over.
- Once the oven is preheated, place mini pies in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes, or until you see the crust turning a nice golden brown. You could start with a timer at 20 minutes and check every 3-5 minutes until the filling starts bubbling and the crust is golden.
- Cool for 5 min with the pan on a cooling rack, then remove them from the cupcake tin. Enjoy!
Did you make this recipe?
Tag @vanillawhisk on Instagram
