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Award-Winning Maple Blueberry Pie
![Award-Winning Maple Blueberry Pie](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/07/19/dining/19PIE6/19PIE6-articleLarge.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 2½ hours, plus chilling
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- 2¾cups/340 grams all-purpose flour
- ⅛teaspoon cinnamon
- 1tablespoon maple sugar
- 1teaspoon salt
- ¼teaspoon baking powder
- 4tablespoons/57 grams cold shortening
- 12tablespoons/170 grams cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 2teaspoons cider vinegar
- 6tablespoons/89 milliliters cold water
- 6cups/907 grams blueberries
- 1Granny Smith apple
- 2heaping tablespoons minute tapioca (a little less if you prefer a softer filling)
- ⅛teaspoon salt
- ⅛teaspoon cinnamon
- ½cup/100 grams sugar
- ⅓cup/79 milliliters maple syrup
- ¾teaspoon maple extract
- 1tablespoon lemon juice
- 1egg yolk
- 1tablespoon heavy cream
For the Crust
For the Filling
Preparation
- Step 1
Make the dough: In the bowl of a food processor, mix the flour, cinnamon, maple sugar, salt and baking powder. Add the shortening and process until well incorporated. Add the butter and pulse until pea-size nuggets of butter remain. Add the vinegar and water, and pulse until dough is just holding together. Divide into 2 disks. Wrap in plastic and chill in refrigerator overnight.
- Step 2
Make the filling: If using a sous-vide machine, place the blueberries into a vacuum-sealable bag. (If not, see Step 4.) Peel and core the apple and grate with a box grater. Squeeze the grated apple to remove the juice. Disperse the grated apple among the blueberries in the bag.
- Step 3
In the bowl of a food processor, grind the tapioca, salt, cinnamon and sugar until the tapioca is fine. Then add to the bag. Stir the maple syrup, maple extract and lemon juice together and pour into the bag. Seal the vacuum bag. Cook in water bath at 150 degrees for 1 hour. Remove and cool on the countertop for 5 minutes.
- Step 4
If using a stovetop, prepare the ingredients in the same way as the sous-vide method, but place all the ingredients in a saucepan with a lid, and stir well to combine. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring gently and occasionally, just until the berries soften and begin to give off their juice, about 20 minutes. Remove and cool on the countertop for 5 minutes.
- Step 5
Assemble the pie: Roll out one of the dough disks on a lightly floured surface to make a top crust, and cut into 4 large strips. Press the dough into a wood-grain impression silicone mat and freeze for about 15 minutes. Or, simply place the 4 strips on a baking sheet lined with parchment and freeze.
- Step 6
Roll out the second dough disk and place in a 9-inch pie plate. Pour maple blueberry filling into it. Place 4 crust strips on top of pie, slipping one end under another to form an attractive pattern. Trim and crimp edges.
- Step 7
Chill pie in the freezer while heating oven to 425 degrees. Stir the egg yolk and heavy cream together and brush over the top-crust strips. Place the pie in the oven on the bottom rack and immediately reduce heat to 400 degrees. After 15 minutes, rotate pie and cover edge with a pie ring or strips of foil to prevent the edges from overbrowning. Bake for an additional 40 minutes. Let pie cool slightly before slicing.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Hello Jan,
In my experience pre-cooking the blueberries makes them perfect, if you do not pre-cook blueberries they make for a wet, soppy pie. I cook mine on the stove-top with a grated apple for the pectin and spices add to my pre-baked shell for a simple pie or add to my pie dough and bake per usual. In each case I have had no problems. The stove-top method allows you to control the consistency of the blueberry mixture, if the apple is not enough, just add a little cornstarch. Happy Baking!
So it seems you are double cooking the blueberries - once in water bath and then again in overn - doesn't this make the blueberries mushier than if you just put them in pie crust?
You haven't grown up enjoying local maple syrup over blueberry pancakes. Fresh blueberries dropped onto pancakes baking on the griddle, then spread with butter and maple syrup.
Once that experience is parked in your brain, you'll know.
Jan that's my question too. Cannot see the point of pre-cooking the filling. Particularly if using wild blue berries. Otherwise seems lovely. Our fav blueberry pie is in a cooked shell: half cooked blue berries folded with the rest uncooked berries. Whipped cream.
Pointless to pre-cook the blueberries. Despite what one poster indicated, it's not scientifically possible for double cooking blueberries to result in less mushy blueberries than those that are only cooked once. Also, having made hundreds of pie crusts in my years, a tsp of salt is quite a bit. I use a pinch (1/4 tsp or less) for 1 1/2 cups flour. Lastly, with 1/3 cup of maple syrup in the filling, the maple extract seems like overkill. I certainly would not buy it for this.
I'm not a blueberry pie fan (my sister and I are sour cherry all the way) but I baked this and loved it, and so did my family. I love blueberries but not in pies or muffins, but the cooking of the blueberries really makes a big difference. It doesn't taste like a traditional blueberry pie. It had a faintly exotic flavor, like it was huckleberries or some other rare Pacific Northwest berry that doesn't get baked into pies here in the NE.
Why are maple and blueberry's a good combination?
Felt like too much salt in the dough, usually use 1/8 tsp kosher salt. Couldn't taste the other spices.
Tapioca wasn't enough to set filling....but tasted great. Will try again.
Divide the blueberries into two equal portions, cooking half with sugar, lemon, vanilla and spices until they burst and get to a jammy consistency with a cornstarch slurry. Cool those, then combine with the other (uncooked) half of the berries, pile into a cooked crust and chill, This makes a delicious pie that preserves the freshness of the fruit. Don’t forget to add cardamom with the cinnamon for a “what is that wonderful flavor?” surprise.
Fabulous recipe! I added a tablespoon of lemon rind and omitted the maple extract. I used a full bodied maple syrup ( B grade ) from Quebec. As well I prebaked the crust bottom, then poured in the filling and topped the pie with pie pastry pieces cut decoratively using cookie cutters. I brushed the pastry with egg and sprinkled some granulated raw sugar on top. Definitely a repeat! Love serving this pie with a superior quality vanilla ice cream!
To avoid too much wetness for blueberry filling AND the double cook, just toss the raw berries with tapioca granules - about 2 Tablespoons for this many berries. You will get a perfectly set blueberry filling, with the berries neither mushy nor dry.
I just would like to say that Steps 2-4 are confusing if you are NOT using a Sous-Vide because it sounds like you should skip Step 3; however, I read the recipe at least 5 times before realizing there's a bunch of other ingredients listed in Step 3 that need to be included (I know they are listed in the ingredients list, but if you're just moving through the recipe and skip Step 3, it will be too late before you realize there's a whole host of ingredients you never got to).
I really enjoyed this recipe! As a skilled pie maker, it’s wonderful to use a recipe that goes above and beyond most fruit pies. I also took the design idea and it came out beautiful.
Our family did not care for the maple sweetening.
This is a PAIN to make but, good gravy, it's incredible. Agree with others that the dough was dry--I also had a hard time with it, but it did puff up nicely. Used the maple sugar and extract, which are worth ordering because the flavor does come though. Two things: 1) Put a sheet pan underneath the pie or on the rack below!! Ours bubbled over on the oven floor and smoked up the kitchen. 2) We would have used an immersion blender to blend half of the cooked berries before baking for less texture.
This pie is absolutely delicious. The apple and maple really go well with the blueberry, making a unique but amazing pie. The dough ended up being a little bit dry for me, I’d recommend potentially adding a little bit extra water if you’re concerned about the dough. The filling was also just a little sweet, so I don’t think the pie would suffer from taking some of the sugar out. Definitely worth making, and a really interesting take on a blueberry pie
Can’t find instant tapioca anywhere — everyone is out of stock. I did find tapioca flour. Can this substitute, and if so, how much?
I did not have maple extract so I substituted 1/4 tsp vanilla extract.I also decided it needed a little more acid and added a bit more lemon juice but this will depend on the sweetness of the blueberries.Finally, yes you ab-solutely have to pre-cook this or the filling will be very runny. In addition, pre-cooking will allow you to taste and adjust the flavoring before committing it to the pie.I even added about 1/8 tsp of pectin to help thicken it.It's delicious but filling requires pre-cooking.
I followed the recipe pretty exactly (minus maple sugar and maple extract, neither of which I could find—used raw sugar and vanilla extract). Double-cooking the blueberries went fine, in case you’re worried about the comments—mine were still mostly whole.
I'm not a blueberry pie fan (my sister and I are sour cherry all the way) but I baked this and loved it, and so did my family. I love blueberries but not in pies or muffins, but the cooking of the blueberries really makes a big difference. It doesn't taste like a traditional blueberry pie. It had a faintly exotic flavor, like it was huckleberries or some other rare Pacific Northwest berry that doesn't get baked into pies here in the NE.
Unbelievable blueberry pie! I used to hate blueberry pie until this recipe. Highly recommend!
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