Mini Pie

Today is my son's birthday.  Carter turned eleven today, and in honor of his birthday, I made pie.  He and I really like blueberry pie, but the rest of the family, well, not so much.  So normally when I make a pie, we end up with some going to waste.  Sadly, Carter and I get our fill of it before making it to the end, and the rest goes in the trash.

For the waste reason, I don't make pies too often.  However, today I have a solution ~ Mini Pie.  Pies that are exactly one serving - how clever.  My SIL bought me an electric mini pie maker for Christmas last year.  Until now it has sat in the corner of my dining room along with some other wayward "not sure where to go with it" stuff.  Now. apparently when I placed it there, I was cutting back on packaging bulk cause when I went to get it, "it" was all there was - no box, no directions.  Oops.

Not to worry though.  My mini pie maker didn't look to complicated.  In fact, it turned out to be easy peasy with a couple of  things on the plus side.  For one, all you do is plug it in.  There isn't even a heat setting to mess with. Two, it came with it's own cutter to size up the crust just right.  Three and best of all, it's electric.  It doesn't heat the house the way the oven would have.  With a July birthday pie lover, that's important.  Oh, and we had pie in 15 minutes - not 45.  

Now because I hadn't bothered to save the direction/recipe booklet, I was shooting in the dark with regards to how much filling or crust I would need.  So, I decided to use the following blueberry pie recipe that makes a regular nine inch pie and just see.  

Blueberry pie 

3 cups of fresh or frozen blueberries

4 Tbsp of white vinegar

3/4 cup of sugar

1/4 cup of flour

2 pie crusts

In a sauce pan, combine the filling ingredients and stir over low heat  until mixture becomes thick and sauce like.  Line a buttered pie plate with bottom crust and fill with blueberry mixture.  Top with second crust and vent the crust by cutting a simple design or making a few slashes in it with a knife.  Bake at 450 for ten minutes.  Drop heat to 350 and continue baking for 30 -35 minutes.

As it turned out, I needed four crusts not two because the filling was enough to make eight mini pies.  By keeping an eye on them, I determined that fifteen minutes was all the cook time they needed.  And in the end, I had a happily surprised birthday boy who ate not one but two.  On a side note, he did  say that the powdered sugar made them a little messy and that he had to keep licking his fingers while eating.  Ohhh, poor thing ;)