Blueberry Lime Hibiscus Hand Pies

Hello!

I hope y’all are staying cool. I wanted to sneak this recipe in before it gets too hot to turn on the oven and we find ourselves laying flat on the floor trying not to generate heat, or maybe it’s just me who does that. 🤔

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Before we jump into today’s recipe I wanted to share this post from Sophia Real | Real Simple Food who had her first ever pop up in Brussels a few weeks back. Her post does a great job of peeling back the curtains on how to plan, organize, and execute a successful pastry pop up. I was very happy to provide some tips when she reached out and am so happy to see that it was a success!

Also! This week I had the opportunity to help East Fork Pottery celebrate the launch of their newest core collection color, Longleaf at their Brooklyn store. I made a selection of pastries inspired by the color and joined the team and other guests for a social event at the launch. Lately I’ve really enjoyed making vegetal/floral forward cakes that evoke walking through a spring garden or park. These little cakes were made using my cilantro cake recipe, an elderflower and burnt honey pastry cream, matcha Swiss meringue buttercream, and a honey saffron jelly. woo that’s a mouthful. I’m leaning more into cakes recently and perhaps it’s time I share a layer cake recipe here!

And speaking of cake! This week I shared a piece of writing with the fine folks at King Arthur Baking. The piece is about being gay, finding representation in unlikely places and about my great grandfather’s pound cake. It felt vulnerable to open up about my relationship with my family. The process taught me that representation doesn’t always come in a perfect package, it can be messy and contradictory. I wasn’t old enough to speak with my great grandfather about his politics and i’m certain we would have disagreed about some things but I still took what I needed from our relationship and I value what he and the family-favorite cake added to my childhood and queer journey.

Today’s recipe…

I wanted to make a relatively simple fruit-forward recipe while we have access to so many berries right now. The dough gets a little gussied up with the addition of hibiscus that you first grind into the sugar before mixing. This leaves the dough speckled with flecks of tartness that hint at the jammy filling of blueberries inside. Adding sour cream helps to not only tenderize the hand pie dough but also makes it a breeze to mix and handle.

A few notes…

• Feel free to swap the blueberries here for blackberries or raspberries. Better yet, some mixture of the three would be even better!

• Hibiscus is easy to find at your local Mexican or Caribbean grocery store. It’s sold in pretty large bags and is often used to make a drink called agua de jamaica or Jamaican sorrel drink, respectively.

• To avoid having to reroll the leftover dough from cutting out circles feel free to make squares or rectangles, some folks find this to be an easier approach.

• Embrace the leak! When making hand pies or even regular pies you may have fruit juices that bubble and leak onto your sheet tray. This is a sign that your fruit is ripe and juicy! As long as you’re not losing a large amount, this is totally normal and being able to see the juice bubbling through the vents or around the edges means your filling is thickening properly.

Hibiscus Sour Cream Pie Dough

100g white sugar

3 tablespoons dried hibiscus flowers

360g all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

300g unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

150g sour cream, cold

1. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the sugar and hibiscus and process until the flowers are ground to a fine powder and the sugar has taken on a purple color. Remove 60g of this sugar and set aside to use in the filling.

2. To the sugar left in the processor, add the flour and salt and process until the sugar is thoroughly blended into the flour.

3. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles wet sand - about 5 to 6 long pulses. Add the sour cream and continue to pulse until the mixture starts to gather near the blades. Scrape down the bowl of the processor and pulse a few more times to bring the dough together.

4. Pour the dough out onto a clean surface lined with parchment paper and knead until the dough comes together into a rough ball. Divide the dough, stack the pieces on top of each other and press out into a rough rectangle. Do this once more to bring the dough together into a smooth rectangle about one inch thick.

5. Wrap tightly in plastic and place in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight. Dough can be frozen for several weeks. Place in the fridge overnight before using.

Blueberry Filling

60g hibiscus sugar from above

25g cornstarch

370g blueberries

zest and juice from one lime

1. In a medium saucepan combine the reserved 60g hibiscus sugar, cornstarch, blueberries, juice, and zest. Place over medium high heat.

2. Stir the berries until the mixture comes to a boil and the berries begin to burst and collapse. The juices should begin to thicken and leave a clean trail when you stir a silicone spatula across the bottom of the pan.

3. when there are only a few partial blueberries left in the pan and the filling appears thick and jammy, remove from the heat and pour into a shallow heat safe container. Cover and cool completely in the fridge. The filling can be made up to 3 days in advance.

To assemble..

1 large egg, beaten

2 to 3 tablespoons coarse sugar

1. Remove the pie dough from the fridge and allow it to rest at room temp to soften for 10 minutes. Unwrap the dough and lightly dust your surface with flour. Roll out the dough until it’s just slightly thicker than 1/8th of an inch. Cut out 10 six inch diameter circles using a large cutter or a small knife. Gather the leftover dough and re-roll to get 2 more rounds for a total of 12.

2. Keep the rounds of dough in the fridge to stay cool while you work on filling one or two handpies at a time. Place 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of blueberry filling into the center of one dough round. Use your finger or a brush to dampen the upward facing edges of the dough. Gently fold the dough in half over the filling until the opposite edges meet then carefully press the dough together across both sides.

3. Use the tines of a fork to crimp the edges and seal the filling inside. Use a small knife to cut small vents into the top of each pie. Preheat the oven to 375F with a rack in the upper middle position. Place the handles into the freezer for 30 minutes. Remove onto a parchment lined sheet tray and brush with an even coat of the beaten egg then sprinkle with coarse sugar. You may need to bake in two rounds or use two sheet trays.

4. Bake the hand pies for 25 to 30 minutes until the edges are golden brown and the dough feels firm. There may be blueberry filling bubbling up through the vents or from the edges of the pies, this is okay.

5. Allow the baked hand pies to cool on the pan for 15 to 20 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. Enjoy warm.