Blueberry time!

Blueberries were on sale this week, and in our house that is cause for joy! We all love blueberries -- straight off the bush, tossed into salads, stirred into yogurt, or baked into many wonderful treats. I decided to make a blueberry pie for Father's Day.

I've made gluten free pies before, but haven't really had much success with the crusts. They were okay, but not great. I found the dough very difficult to work with, and the crusts have come out heavy and hard. They broke too easily. But, what the heck, try try again.

I looked at a few recipes and decided to make a couple of changes. This time, the crust was fantastic. Here's what I did:

I whisked together in a bowl:
2/3 cup sorghum flour
2/3 cup potato starch
2/3 cup tapioca starch
3 Tablespoons corn starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
4 tsp sugar
1 tsp. baking powder

Then I used a pastry cutter to cut in 1/2 cup butter and 1/3 cup shortening until the mixture was crumbly.

Then I whisked together 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar. I dumped this into the flour mixture, and stirred it with my hands until it held together. It was a little bit sticky, so I added about a tablespoon of sweet rice flour, which I had on hand because I was going to use that when I rolled out the dough. I divided the dough into 2 pieces, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and refrigerated them for a couple of hours.

For the pie filling, I mixed 3 pints of blueberries, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1/4 cup corn starch, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, and stirred it all around.

To roll out the pie crust, I sprinkled a piece of parchment paper with some sweet rice flour, put the dough on the parchment paper, sprinkled some more rice flour, and covered it with another piece of parchment paper. I rolled the dough between the parchment papers until it was a little larger than the pie plate. Then I peeled off the top layer and flipped the dough onto the pie plate. It rolled out and held together beautifully, which had never happened before when I made a GF pie crust. So I had hope!

I filled the crust with the blueberry filling, and dotted it with about 2 T of butter. Then I rolled out the second crust in the same way as the first. But instead of rolling it flat and putting the whole thing on top, I cut stars out with a cookie cutter. I made an egg wash with a beaten egg and a Tbsp. of milk, and brushed the edge of the pie crust with it. The I started layering stars on top, brushing with the egg wash so they would stick together.

It went into the oven at 4oo degrees for 20 minutes, then I lowered the temperature to 350 and cooked it for another 30 minutes.

I had a little bit of extra dough, so my daughter and I made a couple of extra stars and I baked them in the toaster oven with a little cinnamon and sugar on top until they were toasty. They were a yummy treat!

The pie turned out great. My husband said that there was no way anyone could tell that this was a gluten free crust. It was tender and flaky, just right. The blueberries cooked up beautifully, and the pie wasn't runny at all. We served it with some vanilla ice cream on the side. It was a wonderful father's day treat!

I tried to work out the carbs per piece of pie, and thought that an eighth of the pie was about 70 carbs. It was hard to figure because I had to add flour to roll the dough, and I wasn't sure how much I had shaken on. But when Daniel tested his blood sugar just now, he was at 215, but there was no correction, so I think he's not going to go wacky high. Ice cream can also do funky things to his blood sugar, but he only had 1/2 cup.

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there. And I hope you get to enjoy blueberry season, too!


(NOTE: I made the pie again on 6/27, and this time took pictures of the dough making process. It really helps to have someone there to take pictures with you or your camera gets all smeary!!!)

I'm also posting this recipe on http://www.glutenfreehomemaker.com/!! Great site, and a wonderful place for sharing recipes.