Mustikkapiirakka

Heading to a friend's for lunch today to celebrate the day my friend Jeff first landed on this planet. Since it is his birthday, he gets to dictate the menu, which I am told is nachos :-) . Such a man!  And he wants blueberry pie from me for dessert. Ah geez.  I hate making pastry crusts. So I start googling...and I find this variation..... Mustikkapiirakka or Finnish Blueberry Pie.  

I must admit I have no idea how to say this (moose-tikka-pee-rah-ka I read) but the picture on Great British Chefs looks incredible and, the recipe is gluten-free, which is a bonus as Jeff's lovely wife Lisa has Celiac.

Unfortunately blueberries are not in season right now in Canada.  What is actually?....its still bloody winter here and its almost April!  So I have gone with frozen wild blueberries.The only thing I find with baking with frozen fruit is you have to be careful to drain the fruit well, otherwise the colour of the fruit will bleed into your filling. .

I will mention that this recipe is scaled, meaning the ingredients are weighed and not measured. While it may seem like a bit of fuss, from my baking courses at George Brown I have learned all too well that a recipe that is scaled is much more accurate and much less likely to fail than one that is measured in cups.  If you don't have a kitchen scale, all is not lost...this is a great conversion calculator you can use to get you through...until you get a scale! Trust me...it makes a difference.

Mustikkapiirakka or Finnish Blueberry Pie

Crust:

150g butter, softened

150g sugar (divided into 150 g and 75g)

1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

100g rice flour
100g almond flour

1 tsp baking powder

Filling:

400g blueberries

300ml full fat greek vanilla yogurt
2 eggs
50g rice flour
zest of half a lemon

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375°F and grease a 10-inch loose-bottomed tart pan with cooking spray. 

In a medium sized container or bowl, sift together the flour and the baking powder. This not only mixes the two thoroughly, but removes any lumps or other miscellaneous things you don`t want to appear in your finished product.
Bake in oven for 10 min. then remove and allow to cool slightly while you prepare the filling.  Reduce heat in the oven to 350 degrees.Then pour the mixture in dollops over the blueberries, covering the entire surface of the cake. Using the back of a spoon, spread out filling to cover any bare spots.  When I went back to check on the totally cooled cake, it split and looked like someone had dragged a spoon across the filing in two spots (and yes I did ask the family if they sampled and they didn`t).  So I went back to filing recipe, made some adjustments and it worked just fine and tasted great!

Using a paddle attachment on your mixer, cream together the butter and 150g of the sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in one of the eggs and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Fold in the combined flour and baking powder.

The batter will be fairly thick but not dry. Spread the batter over the bottom and up the sides of the tart pan.  Place tart pan on a cookie sheet to make it easier to get in and out of the oven.

Whisk together the yogurt remaining ingredients: greek yogurt, 50g sugar, 50 g flour, lemon zest, 2 eggs, and the vanilla.  Sprinkle blueberries over the cooling crust. 

Bake for 45-50 minutes in 350 degree oven then turn the oven off and allow the cake to sit in the oven for a further 10 minutes. Place the tart pan on a wire rack to cool completely before taking the pie out of its pan to serve.

Note: While the cake on Great British Chefs looks great, the recipe didn't work for me. Everything worked well - or so it seemed - right up until I had the cake out of the oven cooling on the rack.