Blueberry Peach Pie

I’m a sucker for a good fresh fruit pie… Well really any fresh fruit dessert. Vince and I had picked fresh blueberries a few weeks ago and peaches were really in season, so what better to do than make them into a pie!! 

Now, for those of you that know me well, I don’t like to take shortcuts when it comes to baking or cooking. I make the dough, crust or pastry from scratch; none of that store bought stuff. I like to take my time and make it knowing that every bit of it was made by me! So, with this pie, I researched about making pie crusts and filling. While the filling was pretty standard and I knew how to do it, it’s always good to reference online. When it came to the crust, I knew that vegetable shortening would be involved. If you know anything about shortening, you know that it is straight fat in a can…. So healthy!! But go big or go home, right?!

So let’s get to the recipe: 

Crust: 

Ingredients: 

2 ½ (give or take) cups all purpose flour 

1 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter that has been chilled and cubed. 

¾ cup vegetable shortening that is chilled

½ cup ice water

Instructions:

• Mix the flour and the salt together in a large bowl. Add the butter and the shortening. Using a pastry cutter (or two forks as I did because I do not have a pastry cutter), break up the butter and the shortening into the flour mixture. It should look like coarse meal or pebbled sand. 

• From the bowl with ice water (yes, ice water), measure ½ cup of the water out. 1 tablespoon at a time, stir the water into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon or spatula. Add one tablespoon of water at a time and stir until a dough begins to form into large chunks. I ended up using the entire ½ c of water plus one tablespoon extra. The amount of water is all dependent on what your dough needs. 

• Flour your surface and turn the dough out. With floured hands, fold the dough into itself until the flour is all incorporated into the butter and shortening and there are no pockets of raw flour or large portions of butter. Form the dough into 2 even balls and flatten them into disc shapes. Wrap them both in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 1-2 hours. In my case, I froze the crust for about 20-30 (while I made my filling) to make this go quicker. 

• Once your dough is chilled, roll it out on a lightly floured surface. Roll it out to your desired thickness/side of pan. If you like thicker crust, make it thicker and visa versa. Transfer one half into a buttered/sprayed baking dish (shape doesn’t matter!!). Repeat with the other disc and set aside/back into the fridge. Once you’ve placed your filling in the pie on top of the first piece of crust, take the second piece of dough and cut it into strips, stars, as a whole, or really whatever you’d like. A traditional pie is the crosshatched pattern, which I attempted (it’s very hard). But feel free to be creative!! You will probably have a little bit of leftover dough. 

Filling: 

Ingredients: 

• ½ cup sugar

• ½ cup brown sugar 

• ½ cup flour 

• Cinnamon (as much as you like to your tasting) 

• Allspice (as much as you like to your tasting) 

• Pinch of salt 

• 2 cups fresh peaches, sliced (fruit amount varies on your baking dish size) 

• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Instructions: 

• In a large bowl, combine sugars, flour, cinnamon, allspice and salt. Add the fruits and toss to coat. Set this aside or in the refrigerator for the fruit's natural juices to extract. 

Tips: 

• I got a big pan of shortening from Aldi; I’m not sure if you can get smaller ones, but that would be nice here if you don’t do much more baking with it. 

• Really any fruit works with this. Feel free to mix it up!! Frozen fruit is also a good option, but fresh tastes better in my opinion.

• There is no need to peel the peaches, at least in my opinion. I feel as though the skin has a lot of flavor. 

• Make this recipe you’re own. The only measurements that are important are for the crust. Other than that, the amount of crust, thickness, amount of fruit and spices are up to you and what you have on hand. 

• This does not need to be made in a circular pie dish. While that would be the most appealing, I do not have one… so I improvised! 

Mine is not very 'pretty' or 'aesthetic' looking, but it tasted delicious!

I hope you try this out & feel free to ask if you have ANY questions!!!