ABC - Blueberry Hand Pies

When I saw this recipe for Blueberry Hand Pies on the King Arthur Flour website, I knew I had to give these a try. They were a natural choice for the ABC group :o) These portable hand pies are made with a flaky crust that's a cross between a traditional pie crust and puff pastry, and filled with sweet and juicy fruit.

Blueberry/Plum Hand Pies

I used a combination of blueberries and black plums, but the options are endless. Use your favorite fruit(s) and adjust the sugar and thickener accordingly.

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Given the amount of butter in the recipe, I knew I'd be the only big fan of this recipe in this house :o) So I cut the crust recipe in half.

The crust recipe was a bit tricky. I followed Karin's advice and mixed the cold butter and flour in the food processor, being careful not to overmix it and keeping pea-sized chunks of butter. After adding the sour cream, the dough was still very crumbly. Fellow ABC-ers had a similar experience and cautioned against adding any additional liquid. I put the dough on my floured pastry cloth, and used the cloth to push the dough together. When the dough started to stick together better, I rolled it out, did a business letter fold, and repeated that step. Into the fridge it went for a few hours.

For the filling I chose frozen blueberries (4 oz) and one black plum (4 oz). I decided to make the full recipe because it wouldn't take that much more time to make and I'd have a little treat that I could enjoy with some yogurt or something else. I know that corn starch tends to "dull" flavors, and I feel it did in this filling. I added more sugar and then some more. When it was sweet enough for my taste, I still thought it was missing something, so I added the zest of half a lemon.

When I rolled out the dough into an 8" x 14" rectangle, I thought the hand pies would be pretty big if I made only four, so I decided to make 6 smaller ones instead.

I cut out leaves in four of them. Just for fun, I cut out a lattice top for two of them. They turned out cute :o)

My kitchen was pretty hot when I made. The crust had softened quite a bit when I was done assembling the hand pies, so I put the baking sheet in the freezer for about 5 min. I brushed them with an egg wash and sprinkled them with some coarse turbinado sugar, and into a 425F oven they went.

After 19 min, they were golden brown and delicious.

Look at those flaky layers. Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• As soon as these came out of the oven, I was greeted by the intense butter aroma that the hand pies gave off. While I loved this aroma, my husband cautiously approached the baking sheet and said "I can tell these have a LOT of butter". Ha ha.
• I was afraid he might not even give these a try, but he's a good sport and he ate half of one. He found the crust way too buttery and thought the filling needed even more sugar. His rating: 8 out of 10.
• I loved these hand pies. When I ate half of one, it was still slightly warm and it was absolute heaven. It reminded me of a European pastry made with high quality all-butter puff pastry. The ratio of filling to crust was perfect. The filling was perfectly thickened, not too runny and not too stiff. I thought the sweetness of the filling was fine and the lemon zest was subtle but noticeable. And the dark purple color of the filling was beautiful.
• My BFF also tried one and she liked it. It reminded her of some pastries she had in Europe. She too found the crust a bit too buttery and gave this an 8.5 out of 10 rating.
• If you'd like to try this recipe yourself, you can find the recipe on the KAF website.
• Don't forget to check out what the other ABC-ers said about this recipe.