Mary Blenk’s Maine Wild Blueberry Pie
This award-winning wild blueberry pie recipe is juicy, not runny, the berries sweet (yet just a bit tart), the crust flaky and light: everything a blueberry pie should be.
By Yankee Magazine|Feb 15 2022|
Mary Blenk's Maine Wild Blueberry Pie
Photo Credit: Stacey CrampThis award-winning wild blueberry pie recipe is juicy, not runny, the berries sweet (yet just a bit tart), the crust flaky and light: everything a blueberry pie should be.
See more of our favorite blueberry recipes.
Yield
1 double-crust pie
Total Time
30 minutes
Ingredients
dough for a 9-inch, 2-crust pie:
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for work surface and crust bottom
1/4 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup butter-flavored vegetable shortening
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon regular (unflavored) vegetable shortening
5-7 tablespoons ice water, divided
Granulated sugar (for crust bottom)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400°. In a large mixing bowl, whisk flours with salt and baking powder. Add butter-flavored shortening; use a pastry blender to work it in until the mixture has the consistency of fine meal. Add regular shortening, and blend until mixture looks like wet sand with pea-sized bits of shortening (Mary says this will make the crust flakier).
Add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time. Toss with a fork until dough starts to form a ball. Turn dough onto floured counter, and knead three times, until smooth. Divide dough into two balls, one slightly larger than the other.
On a floured surface, roll out larger ball to a 13-inch circle and transfer into a 9-inch glass pie plate. Dust bottom of crust with a bit of sugar and flour. Trim any excess dough that is draping over the edges of the pie plate, and set aside.
Filling:
Ingredients
1/2-1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon light-brown sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon Minute Tapioca mix
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 cups Maine wild blueberries (preferably frozen)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon salted butter
Instructions
In a separate mixing bowl, prepare the filling. Whisk together sugars, flour, tapioca, and spices. Toss berries in dry mixture. Pour berries gradually into crust, holding back flour mixture with a big spoon. When the coated berries fill the bottom, pour the rest of the dry mixture on top of berries. Drizzle lemon juice over berries; dot with butter.
Roll out top crust to a 10-inch circle and set atop pie. Fold bottom crust up over top crust; crimp to seal. Cut slits in the top. Use leftover dough to make berries and leaves to decorate the top. Bake 40-45 minutes for fresh berries, 5-10 minutes longer if you’re using frozen, until juices bubble up out of the vents.
Thank you for the recipe!
If I don’t have tapioca, should I omit it, or replace it with another ingredient?
Here is a link that will help you figure out alternative thickeners!
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/pie-thickener.html
Amazing.
Can I substitute fresh strawberries? Do I need to change anything if I do? I need to make one BB and one str 🙂
Hi Sarah. We haven’t tried this recipe with strawberries, but it should work fine, so long as the “juicy factor” is the same for both fruits! Thanks!
The measurement of sugar in the filling reads “1/2-1 cup granulated sugar” — Does that mean to use one’s judgement between 1/2-cup and 1-cup of sugar, or is it a typo and should read 1-1/2 cup sugar (i.e., a cup and a half)?
Hello! Based on the sweetness of your berries, and your personal preference, the amount of sugar needed in the filling is flexible. We recommend somewhere between 1/2 cup and 1 cup. Happy baking!
Would you please consider making your recipes “printer friendly”? Printing always includes the Photo of the finished recipe which seems a waste of paper and ink. It also prints all the comments below unless I guess how many pages the recipe will take without including them.
The Framer’s Almanac has a “Printer Friendly’ version that works well.
Thank you!
Hi Nadine. While we may be sister-companies, our websites are (unfortunately) on different platforms, so we do not have the same features and capabilities. We understand your concern about the way our recipes currently print, even in printer-friendly mode. A solution may be to copy and paste just the text of the recipe into a Word document and print that at the size you prefer. Hope this helps! Thanks and happy baking!
Most printers give you a preview of the document prior to printing allowing you to uncheck the pages you don’t want leaving the pages you do want to print unchecked. Hope this help! ????
I remember when I was really young and living back in New England (Wakefield, Massachusetts) my mother and I would pick blueberries in the woods in back of our house. Depending on how much we were able to pick depended on whether blueberry pie or blueberry muffins were made. Oh, for the good old days! They weren’t Maine blueberries, but were yummy in the pies and muffins.
This is a great recipe. The crust works up nicely and the filling delicious! I use it often.
I use 3 tablespoons of cornstarch instead of flour to thicken the filling. I also add a tablespoon of lemon zest. You have to make a good guess on the amount of sugar depending on the tartness of the berries. I also use egg white with a pastry brush on the top and then sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the top crust. I cook at 425 for 15 minutes and then reduce to 350 for 30 minutes and add a pie crust shield to the pie.
Not a fan of cooked blueberries, my sister told me about a blueberry pie she had at a place in Maine. Prebaked pie crust, 4 cups berries, reserve 3 cups, cook 1 cup water, 2 T cornstarch 1 cup sugar 1 cup berries till cornstarch mixture is clear. Pour over the 3 cups fresh berries and fold gently till all berries are covered. Place in baked pie shell. Chill if desired, serve with whipped cream.
This is called Glace Pie. You cooked the mixture gently until thick, not clear, then mix in the raw berries and chill. You can so add cinnamon or lemon to the cooked mixture. Hands down my favorite blueberry pie.
This is my preferred way to enjoy blueberry pie. Especially cooling during the summer with fresh whipped cream.
Have done this myself….yum!
There are no bad Maine blueberry pie recipes,especially if they are Maine blueberries! All heavenly.
so you do not thaw thw berries before assempling the pie?
I use unsalted butter in place of the butter-flavored shortening. Using an egg wash on top of the pastry crust is always a good idea
I’ve made this myself! It taste so Delicious and my family loved it!
Can I use regular blueberries if I don’t have access to wild ones?
I love fresh berry pie, i’ve made strawberry, blueberry , raspberry and also a mixture of blueberry,blackbery, raspberry and strawberry all came out delicious. Have fun ,experiment . Enjoy.