ElderBlueberry Pie (with no elderberries) Rose's Alpha Bakers
Tuesday, July 28, 2015 at 12:36PM 
ElderBlueberry Pie (with no elderberries instead blackcurrants and blueberries) 'The Baking Bible'
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Apparently elderberries grow well in Australia, so my local nursery man told me. Yet I have never seen one, an elderberry that is. All about elderberries on Wikipedia
We love a savoury pie here, usually red meat but poultry, seafood and veg pies are also popular. Perhaps that is the reason we don't have a fruit pie culture in Australia, ummm "apple" you might have apple pie over winter or perhaps an aunt might whip up an apple/rhubarb pie. Add in a mini fruit mince pie or three at Christmas and that's your dessert pie eating over for the year. We do like tarts and tarte Tatin but the double pie crust is a hard sell without the meat!
This is supposed to be a family sized pie, but I went with "mini pies" to give sample pies out for my first ever berry pie.
Starting with Rose's 'Perfect Flaky and Tender Cream Cheese Pie Crust' recipe, butter is cubed and then frozen. You can make by hand or with the food processor, I went with the latter. The recipe is a rough puff pastry with a cream cheese/butter combo (rather than all butter or shortening/butter or lard/butter combination).
frozen cubed butter
It's cream cheese that creates a little magic with this pastry, but more on that later first you need to take your chilled flour, salt and baking powder mixture from the freezer and process it with cream cheese.
The frozen butter then goes in for a whizz, cream and vinegar are added and the mix is processed until the butter is the size of small peas.
Removed from the food processor in it's crumb form and pressed together, wrapped and then chilled.
Time to roll... the mottled look showing the tiny pieces of cold butter. I rolled mine between two lightly floured pieces of plastic wrap. Envelope folded, rerolled, chilling happening too!
Cutting my top pieces with love heart steam hole.
There is chilling/resting steps along the way here but I'm on to the elderberry (less) fruit filling now.
Yep, it's winter here so it's frozen berries. Blackcurrants and blueberries were left to defrost over a strainer so I could use the juice in the next step.
A slurry is made with water and cornflour (I used the juice from defrosted berries and made up the extra with water).
Sugar and fruit is added to the pot, I added zest as elderberries would have added more tartness. Looking rather brightly coloured at this stage, but after a brief cooking time to activate cornflour (corn starch) the mixture is thick and dark. If serving pies warm the mixture will thin a little and at room temperature will thicken again. 
Pie pan was lined with pastry, filled with berry filling, topped with pastry tops and baked. Lol, this is one of those"dang I thought I took photos of that bit" moments. But here is a pie!
Inside corner of pie showing the flakiness of the pastry even when rolled paper thin.
Now back to the "cream cheese pastry magic". Normally once you re-roll puff or rough puff pastry you lose more of your "puff" each time your re-roll ... however the cream cheese in this pastry is far more forgiving and allows you to re-roll many times and not lose the rise. Example above is fourth roll out of scraps and you are still getting this height after the pastry was "scrunched" and re-rolled.
Bread baking next Rose's Alpha Bakers bake.
Happy Baking :)
Would I bake again? Yes and no... pastry yes... this would make a wonderful savoury pie crust. As a fruit pie no, but I do want to try other fruit pies from Rose's books there could be a "game changer" in there.
Would I change anything? No, it tasted fine and I guess that's what a berry pie should taste like, I suppose, not sure ha ha.
How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a month I will post about what I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.
The Baking Bible
you might also be interested a fondant pie cupcake ... it has blackbirds :)
Reader Comments (9)
Look at your pastry! So flakey and gorgeous!! I love how you made your pies into tiny pies! Very very pretty! Love it!
Thank you Faithy … great pastry recipe from Rose! I'm calling it Rose's "magic pastry" from now on :) I do like mini "sharing" food … if it fits on a tiered cake stand it must be good :)
Super! I love the little pies. And your magic pastry - I glanced at the envelope fold but didn't do it when I was making the dough - Next time will. Have to learn to make the pastry that way. You make everything look so easy. I thought your berries turned a lovely color as well.
Hi, Jeniffer: That pastry looks perfect and your baby pies are delightful! I don't know where to get black currants, but they look delicious. I did use get elderberries, and it was a delicious pie, but oh, so much work! I hope you'll find a moment to stop by my blog and take a look at my results. Michele at www.artfuloven.com
Your lattice topped pie was lovely Joan… and your presentation is so elegant and inviting. I've just been doing it (baking) a long, long time strongly recommend "an education" over baking a long, long time … but hey I can make pastry ;)
Michele… your battle with elderberries ended up with you victorious producing the most gorgeous and as Rose intended, "a proper" ElderBlueberry pie. :D
Your little pie is gorgeous and I have serious flaky pie pastry envy. One day mine might look like that....
I too prefer a chicken pie. Although I'm fond of anything in pastry.
Thank you Catherine…. don't you think this pastry would really suit a chicken pie :) I kept thinking eating the fruit pie "this would be good with curried potato/pumpkin" … it was unfamiliar biting into a pie and it was berries.
Beautiful pastry and beautiful tartlets. I'm certain they were delicious. Nice post.