Hand pies are an excellent way to indulge in summer’s bounty. Make these handpies with blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries, pitted and halved cherries, sliced peaches, nectarines, or a combination. Nectarines are amazing paired with blueberries, by the way!
You can either cook the filling or keep it raw if you don’t want to stand at the stove; after baking you can hardly tell them apart. Bake in the evening if you want to keep from warming your house on a hot summer day.
Makes 8 Hand Pies
For the Filling:
2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest
2 teaspoons cornstarch
For the Pie Dough:
2½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks
4 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening
6–8 tablespoons ice water
For Finishing:
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
Raw sugar for sprinkling
For a cooked filling:
Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and set over moderate heat. Cook, stirring, until berries pop and sauce thickens, about 5 minutes.
For a raw filling:
Simply mix all ingredients in a bowl or jar. Storing the raw filling overnight in the refrigerator helps thicken the juices, especially when using frozen berries.
To make the dough:
Measure flour and salt into food processor bowl. Add the butter and shortening and pulse until mixture is uniformly crumbly. (If you prefer, you can cut the butter and shortening into the flour with a pastry blender or with two table knives, as my grandmother did.) Sprinkle 4 tablespoons ice water over the crumbly dough. Pulse a few times to incorporate. If mixture seems dry, add 2 more tablespoons of ice water and pulse just until the mixture begins to form a ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat into a rough disk a couple inches thick. Cut in half and then flatten and round each half into smaller disks about an inch thick. Wrap disks in plastic or parchment and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 400°F.
Whisk together the egg and milk for the egg wash and set aside.
Roll out chilled dough thinly on a lightly floured surface and use a quart yogurt container or 5-inch diameter bowl to mark circles on the dough, cutting around the edge with a knife. Aim to get 4 circles from each dough disk. Cut smaller decorative shapes from the scraps, rerolling as necessary. Roll each circle a bit thinner to about 6 inches in diameter.
Transfer circles to a parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pan. Spoon 2 heaping tablespoons of filling into the center of each circle. Fold over into half-moons and crimp edges with a fork. Decorate with the small cutouts and brush each hand pie with egg wash. Cut steam vents in the dough if you wish and sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until beginning to brown. Remove from oven and let cool a few minutes on pan, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
Note: You can store the raw dough in the refrigerator for up to 2 days or wrap in a freezer bag and freeze for up to 2 months. To use frozen dough, thaw overnight in the refrigerator until it is pliable.
