I love blueberries!  For as long as I can remember, my parents have had blueberry bushes.  Some of my oldest memories are of picking berries in the hot summer sun.  There is nothing like the taste of blueberry that is warm from the sun.  It just seems to burst in your mouth!

As a little kid, one of my daily chores was to fill a coffee can with blueberries every day (for as long as the season lasted). Back then I would complain about having to pick them, but now…I love it.  It’s so relaxing to be in the blueberry patch, plucking handful after handful of those dark blue gems!  When I was little, it seemed to me that it would take hours to fill that coffee can.  Now, I can stay down there all evening and fill bucket after bucket!

Since I’ve always had easy access to blueberries, I’ve become sort-of a blueberry snob.  I don’t like blueberry flavored foods, like muffins, cakes, or blueberry topping that comes in a can.   Only fresh picked berries will do for me!  In fact, when I still lived at home with my parents, I would usually just take my measuring cup down to the blueberry patch to pick whatever I needed to bake or cook with. They would go right from the bush and into my muffins or pancakes or coffee cake.  I also pick buckets full during the summer and freeze them to use during the off-season.

You name it and we’ve made it with blueberries!  Of course there are pies, cakes, muffins, and pancakes.  There’s also cobblers, crisps, smoothies, jam, syrup, sauces and, most recently, wine!

My husband and I just planted over 30 blueberry bushes on our land this past spring!  Right now, they are just little twigs that we’re trying to nurture and coax into the big bushes my parent’s have.  I think I was able to pick 6 berries from our bushes this year!  Definitely not enough for a pie!  So for the time being, I’ll continue to raid my parent’s blueberry patch!

Thanks for reading my rambling trip down my blueberry memory lane.  I hope you enjoy this blueberry pie as much as my family does.

Alternative

Baked for 25 minutes in the ramekin

Carefully removed from the ramekin!

When I make this pie, I usually do a lattice top crust.  This leaves me with some extra pastry.  Rather than throw it away, I used it make this little individual pies in ramekins!  I made them for my girlfriends as a little treat for our playgroup.  I have to admit I was surprised at how good they came out!  This is a very cute twist on traditional blueberry pie!  And, everyone had their own little pie!

Is it a Keeper?

Do you know how you know when you’ve made a great blueberry pie?  When you take the first slice of pie of the pan, and the juice from the pies doesn’t run into the empty space!  Or, when you put a slice of pie on your plate and it holds its shape – that’s when you know you did it right!

This pie recipe is perfect every single time!  The berries are sweet and the crust is so flaky and tender.  It’s the  quintessential summer dessert!  I love making these pies (and my husband loves eating them!).

Pie Making Tips

Here are few tips that I’ve learned (most of them I’ve learned the hard way!) along the way:

• It is 100 times fast to make pie crust in a food processor.  The dough is ready in under 30 seconds!
• Make sure all of your pastry ingredients are ICE COLD!  You don’t want to use room temperature anything! This will make a flaky crust.
• If you’re using frozen blueberries, do not thaw them.  Use them frozen.
• If your crust starts browning too fast in the oven, cover the edges with a pie crust shied or a piece of aluminum foil.
• Bake your pie on the middle rack of your oven.
• Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and put the foil lined sheet on the rack directly under the pie in the oven.  This will catch any bubble over spills and make a clean up easy.

Christina

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