Fruits of the Forest Pie

I know that I had promised to bake more..and now that I'm moving out of my apartment I am! I had 2 frozen pie crusts and I thought that yesterday was perfect for a pie. 

I had tried to just use the other pie crust as the top crust, but it fell apart on me, so I decided to be a little creative instead. I cut out (using cookie cutters) hearts and made the top crust that way. This way, there were vent holes where the pie could do its thing. 

It was so delicious. We couldn't even stop and get a picture of its inside. The many many different berries made it a great combination. I feel like you could still taste all of them even though they were mixed together. It was still warm about 2 hours later when we finally dug into it and it was gone in 2 minutes. 

Fruits of Forest Pie (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

1 double crust pie crust
2 cups strawberries, cut into small pieces
1 cup blueberries
1 cup raspberries
1 cup blackberry
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Ease bottom crust in 9-inch pie pan.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Stir in berries. Gently toss berries until coated. Transfer berry mixture to the pastry-lined pie plate.
Trim bottom pastry to edge of pie plate. Place top crust on filling and fold edge under bottom pastry. Flute edge as desired.  Prick with fork for steam vents. ( I made the top crust by cutting some pie dough into shapes of hearts and decoratively placed them on the pie) 
Bake for 50 minutes, or until top is golden filling is bubbling. Cool on wire rack.

Blueberry Cupcakes

These blueberry cupcakes were a wonderful summer cupcake to make. I found a wonderful recipe on a wonderful blog and I decided to make it for some friends.

These were a great cupcake and delicious. The blueberries were really cheap and since I got a whole lot of them, I decided to make some cupcakes with it.

Blueberry Cupcakes
Ingredients:
1/2 cup [1 stick] unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk or yogurt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Insert liners into a regular muffin pan.
Cream sugar and butter together.
Add eggs one at a time to the mixture and beat well.
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add flour mixture in portions alternating with yogurt/milk.
Fold in vanilla extract and blueberries.
Fill cupcake liner with about 2 Tablespoons of batter.
Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until the toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool cupcakes in pan.

Mini Lemon Blueberry Cheesecakes [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa's Sunday's recipe was the Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake with a Crumble Cornmeal Crust chosen by Eliana of a Chica Bakes.

I decided to make these into mini versions of it because I like mini versions of cake and cheesecake. My friend Andrea is leaving for Spain, well she left. The dinner before her leaving was Friday night and I decided to make these cheesecakes.

I made these without mascarpone cheese either. I didn't have the time to go to either Whole Foods or Berkeley Bowl with all the summer school, so instead I decided to look for a mascarpone cheese substitute. I found a recipe of Allrecipes that was one. I'm sure it doesn't taste exactly the same, but it was a lot cheaper to do it this way especially time wise.

I also decided not to make it a Cornmeal crust since I don't have cornmeal, but I did have extra graham cracker crumbs from making my s'mores bars. I made a graham cracker crust for the bottom. I ended up make 50 (!) mini cheesecakes and brought almost all of them to the party. Everyone basically loved it. =]

Make sure to check out the other bakers at the Sweet Melissa Sunday's website.



Like the new signature and blog front? I decided to change it up a little bit!