Happy Friday, my friends! Who’s ready to bake some pie?!! Today we celebrate renowned baker Erin McDowell and her wonderful and extremely comprehensive cookbook, The Book on Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake Perfect Pies. Whether you’re an expert pie baker or a complete novice on the pie baking front, as long as you ❤️ pie, this Famous Fridays is for you!

There are tons and tons of amazing recipes for pie in this book and it would have been extremely difficult to pick which one to feature but for the fact that my fridge is full of farm-fresh picked blueberries right now, so choosing this Blueberry Clafoutis Pie, was a no-brainer (told you I’d be unleashing a storm of berry recipes!!)

But before we get to this lovely summery pie, I just want to talk about how truly terrific and aptly named this cookbook is. In addition to a slew of fabulous sweet and savory pie recipes, you will learn everything you need to know about crimping and braiding and the lattice technique, how to blind and par-bake and dock, what special tools and pie plates to use and all different sorts of pie toppings, from streusel to nut butter whipped cream to dark chocolate drippy glaze! And everything is written so clearly with helpful little tips and accompanied by stunning glossy photos that you feel confident that no matter which recipe you try, you’re bound to succeed. In other words, this book is a keeper that I really think you’ll use for years and years!

And now finally, onto Blueberry Clafoutis Pie!!! Traditionally, a clafoutis is a homey French crustless dessert made with cherries that has an eggy batter that gets poured over the fruit and baked. Here, Erin brilliantly translates that into pie form, so that the blueberries get surrounded by a light custard AND you get the magic of an all-butter pie crust. So many great flavors and textures!!

Once you’ve put together and par-baked your pie crust (take a look at this post for how to do all that), you brush it with a little egg wash and fill with your berries

Next you whisk together the custard, pour it over those berries

And bake! Easy-peasy and done!

The filling is slightly creamy and perfectly balances out the juicy berries and crisp golden crust!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a cut piece to show you because I brought it to my sister’s house and it sort of got pounced on and disappeared before I could get my camera out, but that only shows how much it was loved, right?!! And sure, I could make this again (and I will) but I wanted you to have this asap since we’re really in the middle of blueberry season right now. In any case, I hope it inspires you to make your own!

So…get yourself a copy of The Book on Pie as soon as you can—with all the fresh fruit around, now is such a great time to bake pies and have a wonderful, safe and pie-filled weekend!!xoxo

The Book on Pie’s Blueberry Clafoutis Pie-Famous Fridays

Makes one 9-inch pie

Prep Time for Crust: 15 minutes, plus several hours chilling time, rolling out and par-baking. Prep Time for Filling: 10 minutes; Bake Time: 45-55 minutes

Ingredients

For the crust

1 ½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (½ cup) unsalted butter, cut into small cubes and chilled
⅓ cup cold water
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
Ice Cubes
1 large egg whisked with 1 tablespoon cool water, for egg wash

For the filling

10 ounces fresh blueberries
1 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise
½ cup sugar
¼ cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk
⅓ cup heavy cream
3 large eggs
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
Pinch of cinnamon
Confectioners’ sugar for dusting, optional (I didn’t use)

The Recipe

1. For the crust: Add the flour, sugar and salt to the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to blend. Add in the chilled butter and pulse a few times until the butter has become the size of small peas.

2. Into the ⅓ cup cold water, add the vinegar and stir. Then add enough ice cubes to raise the level to ½ cup. Add 2 tablespoons of the mixture to the flour mixture and pulse a few times to incorporate it. It will look very crumbly. Then add 1 more tablespoon and pulse again a few times. You should see the mixture start to come together in a shaggy way with lots of crumbly bits. If you absolutely think you need to, add one more tablespoon of water. I never need to—it’s better for your dough to be too dry than too wet.

3. Turn the crumbly dough out onto a very lightly floured surface and gather it all into a ball. Make sure to scrape out the bowl of the processor—sometimes some of the wet parts of the dough get a little stuck and form the whole thing into a ball. Then flatten into a disk, wrap well in plastic wrap and chill for several hours and even better, overnight.

4. When you are ready to roll out the dough, flour a board or counter with a little flour and flour your rolling pin too. If the dough is very stiff (mine usually is) let it sit out on the counter for about 20 minutes till it seems pliable. Roll out the dough, rolling from the center out and to a corner, then lifting the dough off the surface of the board and giving it a little ¼ turn and rolling again, repeating the process until you’re rolled the dough out into a circle that’s a couple of inches wider in diameter than the pie plate.

5. Fold the dough in half and transfer to the pie plate, unrolling it and then carefully easing it down onto the bottom and sides—no stretching! Fold the overhang over and crimp/decorate the edges any way you like. The easiest way is to just use the tines of a fork pressed into the dough to create a little pattern. Now prick the bottom and sides all over with the tines of the fork.

6. Place the pie plate in the freezer for 30 minutes.

7. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 425ºF. When the 30 minutes are up, line the pie with a piece of aluminum foil or parchment paper and either pie weights or beans. If any of the edges stick out, cut little pieces of foil to fit over them. Bake about 15 minutes and then remove the foil and weights. Return to the oven for about 2-4 minutes more until crust is golden brown and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

8. To make the filling: Place a rack in the bottom third of the oven and preheat oven to 350ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the cooled pie shell onto it. Brush the pie shell all over with the egg wash and then fill with the berries, spreading them out evenly. Set aside.

9. Place the sugar in a medium bowl and scrape the seeds out from the vanilla bean into the bowl (discard the pod, or add to some sugar to make vanilla sugar). Use your fingers to rub the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar so that the sugar gets infused with the vanilla. Whisk in the flour. Then add the milk, cream and eggs and whisk well to combine. Whisk in the salt and cinnamon. Pour the liquid over the berries in the crust and kind of spread it around if it doesn’t distribute evenly.

10. Bake for 45-55 minutes, until the custard is set at the edges but the center is still a little jiggly when you gently shake the pan. Let cool on a wire rack and either dust with the confectioners’ sugar or not and serve. You can serve this while it’s still warm or at room temperature. Like all fruit pies this is best on the day that it is made.

Enjoy!

Note: Recipe adapted from The Book on Pie by Erin Jeannne McDowell. I used this pie crust recipe because it’s been my reliable go-to for years now, but I have used Erin’s too and it’s also terrific.