Blueberry Hand Pies with a Cinnamon Sugar Crust and Maine!!
Makes: 12 hand pies Prep time: 1 hour Bake time: 20 minutes
Ingredients
Crust
4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Dixie Crystals Cinnamon Sugar
1 and 1/2 cups cold, cubed, unsalted butter
4 tablespoons ice water
Blueberry Filling
3 cups frozen blueberries
1/2 cup of Dixie Crystals Granulated Sugar, or a bit more if you like the filling extra sweet
The juice and zest of one lemon
1/4 cup flour
2 egg yolks for brushing the pastry
Dixie Crystals Turbinado Sugar for sprinkling on top of the unbaked pies
Directions
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
Make your blueberry filling by adding all of the filling ingredients together in a medium sized bowl. Stir them together gently so the blueberries don’t break. Set the mixture aside while you make the crust.
In the bowl of your food processor, add all of the crust ingredients. Make sure your butter is cut into small cubes and is VERY cold. Cold butter makes for flakier pie crusts!!
Pulse all of the ingredients until the dough comes together into a ball. The dough is very soft and can be a bit tricky to work with, but chilling it makes it break so make sure NOT to chill it! You can begin working with it right away.
Flour your board and rolling pin very well. You want to make sure your pie dough doesn’t stick to the board.
Roll the dough into about 1/4 inch thickness. You will be able to cut 24 circles with your cookie cutter.
Place 6 circles of dough a few inches apart on each mat.
Place about 2 tablespoons of filling in the middle of each dough round.
Take the other dough rounds and GENTLY cover the filling. If the dough breaks and splits a bit, just take some of the leftover dough and patch it up.
Gently press down around the edges to seal. Crimp the edges with a fork. Again, the dough is soft and a bit tricky to work with, so allow yourself some time and patience to make these. I promise you they are SO worth it!!
Poke holes with a fork in the tops of the pies. I did it about 5 times per pie, so the steam could escape while they are baking.
Beat your egg yolks and brush on top of each pie.
Sprinkle the tops of each pie generously with the Turbinado sugar.
Bake the sheets of pie for 10 minutes. Rotate the pans and bake for another 10 minutes.
Let them rest on the baking pan for a few minutes before eating them. I scorched my mouth because I couldn’t wait 🙂
The best way to eat these is warm from the oven with your favorite flavor of ice cream and whipped cream. I had it with blueberry ice cream in Maine 🙂
Store any extra pies in containers and heat them for about 12 seconds in the microwave to warm them up.
If you have any leftovers, wrap each individually with wax paper and foil and freeze them for up to 4 months.