Summer Time Blackberry Hand Pie's
One of our favorite things about summer is picking wild blackberries also called Pacific's. They usually are ready around the first week of July and can be picked through the end of the month, depending on the weather. They like to grow on stumps and logs, it's always a challenge to find a good patch.
We used some of our berries to make 8 mini blackberry hand pies and baked them in vintage baking tins. You can find vintage baking tins in all different sizes, the ones we used were about 2 1/2 inches around.
We used 2 cups of blackberries, added 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour just to lightly coat the berries. Pre-made pie crust is a big time saver. Just lay your tins on the pie crust dough, cut around them with a small sharp knife leaving about a 1/4 inch of excess dough around the edge of the tin. Place the round pieces of dough in the tins forming the dough so there are no holes in the bottom of the tins.
Scoop in the berries and mound them up a bit in the middle.
We made lattice tops but you can also do a solid top, be sure to slice in a few air holes if you decide to use a solid crust top. Lightly sprinkle each one with sugar and be sure to crimp on your top all around the tin so the juice stays in the pies. Put them directly on your backing rack in the middle of the oven at 350 degrees. I lay a piece of foil over the top of all of the pies for about the first 10 to 12 minutes then remove for the last 10 minutes, this prevents the tops from getting too brown.
They are done when they are bubbling and golden brown on top.
We recently took 4 of our wild blackberry hand pie's with us on a hike to Monte Cristo which is in The Mt. Baker National Forest just outside of Granite Falls, Washington. We enjoyed them with our friends Angie and Brady Blankenship....they tasted like pure summer and the hike was beautiful!
Happy summer!
John and Brenda
