Chef Isaac Strikes Again!

During our grocery trip this week, Trader Joe's had huge packages of fresh blueberries on sale, so I picked one up. Isaac's favorite fruit are blueberries so I knew he'd be stoked. However, I wasn't expecting what he'd want to do with them. 

There are more than we can eat without cooking or doing something with, so I asked what he wanted to do with them. I was expecting blueberry muffins or pancakes... not what his suggestion actually was.

Mini blueberry pies.

Not a regular sized pie, mini ones. There needed to be one for him, me, Daddy, Mimi, Poppi and Aunt Bee. I'm not making this up, these things came out of his mouth.

I wasn't expecting this response because I've never once in my life made blueberry pie and never made mini pies with him, but I figured "what the heck? let's give it a try."

I looked up a basic recipe, but per my usual way of doing things, I took a few different ones and combined them and improvised. Here's what we came up with...

Mini Blueberry Pies

Crust:

1 stick butter, soft

4 oz. cream cheese, soft

1 1/4 cup flour

Pinch salt

Pinch sugar

With a fork, mix it all together. Grease a muffin pan (makes 10-12 pies) and divide between 10-12 muffin cups. I rolled each amount into a ball and pressed into the muffin cup to form a crust, bowl shape (Isaac did this with my supervision and follow up "help").

Filling:

1 1/2 - 2 cups blueberries (cut any super huge ones in half for easier cooking - Isaac did this)

1/4 cup sugar (you can use more if your blueberries are more tart, mine were big, fat and sweet)

1 lemon (zested and juiced)

1/4 tsp. cinnamon (if desired)

1/3 cup water

1 Tbsp cornstarch 

Mix water and cornstarch so there are no clumps (Isaac did this). Add everything else to a pot and boil over medium heat until it is all dissolved and thickened (5-ish minutes boiling, stir!!!). You can burst some of the blueberries if you don't want them whole. Spoon into each crust filled muffin cup. Don't fill above the crust to avoid sticking and burning.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Let them cool in the muffin tin then loosen them before removing carefully. 

Enjoy!