Black and Blue Pie

This whole post is about to get super Portland on you. Like Portlandia-esque Portland. This is a pie I made for my tattoo artist as a tip for my last tattoo. I made it with local berries. And local flour (hey Bob's Red Mill). And local butter (Tillamook). Also I'm wearing black and red flannel right now.

This pie is also super good. It looked great the first time, so I made it again. You should use whatever end of season berries you have and make this. Decorate it any way you want. Maybe put a bird on it? I dunno.

Black and Blue Pie:

Makes one 9” pie

½ recipe best pie dough in the universe

Filling-

3 c. blackberries

3 c. blueberries

2/3 c. – ¾ c. sugar (depending on how sweet your berries are)

1 tsp. lemon zest

1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Dash nutmeg

Dash cinnamon

Topping-

2/3 c. all-purpose flour

3 Tb. brown sugar, packed

½ tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. salt

Dash allspice

Dash nutmeg

6 Tb. unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

Make the pie dough! Roll it out how you do and put it in a 9-inch pie dish. Refrigerate while prepping everything else. If you have extra dough like I did after trimming, use a cookie cutter to make fun shapes with the remainder. Refrigerate alongside pie crust.

Whisk sugar, lemon zest, nutmeg, and cinnamon together. Add berries and toss to coat. Add lemon juice and toss to coat again. Let sit at least 10 minutes.

While your berries are sitting, preheat oven to 375 and make the topping. Whisk together all dry topping ingredients. Add in melted and cooled butter and mix with fingers until blended evenly.

To assemble your pie, remove formed dough from fridge, scoop in berry mixture, and sprinkle topping as evenly as possible.

Bake pie for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the filling is bubbling and your topping has become golden. If it is browning too quickly, cover top with foil. Place a baking sheet on the rack below your pie to catch any bubbly juices.

Let cool on wire rack until you can handle it enough to deliver to your tattoo artist. Or your friends out back. Or your mouth.

I really enjoyed this pie – but it was more like a cobbler because as you might see from the recipe above, I did not add corn starch to the berry mixture. Do that. Add about 2½ tablespoons corn starch to the berry mixture to help gel some of those juicy, juicy berries.

Overall, though, this was a great pie – easy to make, fun to decorate, and a great gift.

You've got a little summer left. Give this pie a try.

And now I'm done with summer pie recipes. On to the fall pies!