Easy Blueberry Pie Bars

About this Recipe

“Hi, we are Grandmother’s Kitchen and we are crazy for blueberries.” This year alone between my mother and her sisters, they collectively purchased over 60 pounds of blueberries. That’s the size of a medium goat! Clearly, our family loves blueberries. We love them on our breakfast, we love them in pies and my Mother’s favorite way to eat them is late at night when she is craving a snack she pulls out a handful of frozen blueberries and savors each and every one while watching her favorite Netflix series, which at the moment is Outlander.

Grandmother’s TIPS for Blueberry Pie Bar Recipe:

1. The crust on this is quite thick when mixing, like a pie crust, so using a stand mixer on low speed will save you some effort.

2. To avoid staining your entire batter blue, pay attention to the directions and wait to fold the blueberries in until just before you are ready to bake the top portion.

3. Remember to save one cup of the pastry portion to sprinkle on the top.

Blueberries and other berries can also get pretty messy too. They tend to stain cabinets and countertops if the bright colored juices come into contact with these surfaces. That’s why it’s important to clean your kitchen countertops really well after you use colored berries or anything else that stains so that you don’t end up with a rainbow of food pigments on your counters.

You can learn how to clean kitchen countertops easily and naturally using only natural kitchen cleaners. Just place a bit of baking soda on the stain and mix in some water. Allow this to sit on the stain and then wipe it away after a while. You’ll notice that the baking soda will have soaked up some of the stain pigments. You can then scrub using some lemon juice directly on the stain with a gentle scrubbing pad.


Ingredients

(Print)

Makes: 12 servings (These are large pieces, you could cut into smaller portions)

Crust and Topping:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

pinch salt

3/4 cup cold butter cut into cubes

Blueberry Bar Filling:

2 eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup sour cream

pinch salt

3 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

Directions

1. Grease a 9x13 baking dish with butter.

2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

3. Start with the Crust and Topping:

4. Put the flour, butter cubes, sugar and pinch of salt into a mixing bowl.

5. Place on low speed and mix until a crumble texture forms.

6. Measure out one cup and set aside, reserving for the topping.

7. Transfer the rest of the mixture into the prepared baking dish and press down firmly, covering the bottom.

8. Place into the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes.

9. Meanwhile, you can prepare the filling.

10. Whisk the eggs into a mixing bowl.

11. Add the sugar, flour, sour cream and pinch of salt and whisk together.

12. Set aside. Do not add the blueberries until the crust is out of the oven.

13. When the crust is ready, remove from the oven.

14. Gently fold the blueberries into the batter and spoon onto the crust evenly.

15. Sprinkle the remaining crust mixture over the top.

16. Place into the oven and bake for one hour or when the top is lightly browned.

17. Remove from the oven to a cooling pad.

18. Let sit at least 10 minutes before slicing.

Tip: If using frozen berries, just slightly defrost and if there are any ice crystals on the berries, rinse off.

ENJOY!

Return to this Easy Blueberry Pie Bars recipe or check out more recipes at Grandmother's Kitchen

The way I feel about blueberries is very similar (in a fruity way) to the way I feel about Chocolate Chip Cookies. They are the one fruit that I choose to be my exception to moderation.

Without exaggeration, this blueberry pie bar recipe will blow your mind in its texture and flavor. I could literally eat the whole pan if there were no digestive complications that would surely follow.

The nice thing about this blueberry pie bar recipe is that you can use fresh or frozen blueberries so you can enjoy this recipe all year long. This blueberry pie bar is the perfect blueberry breakfast recipe, but it can also be enjoyed any time of day. The crust and crumble topping compliment the amazing blueberry filling, plus you get to enjoy all of that blueberry nutrition.

While blueberries don't make the EWG Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce Dirty Dozen, they are number 16 on the list, so it's always a good idea to buy organic blueberries if available (1). Better yet, if you are lucky enough to live close a place where you can pick your own fresh blueberries, you'll want to take advantage of that, and freeze whatever you don't use right away.

Unless you have been living on a distant planet, you probably know that that blueberries are a nutritional power food. A superfood. The Superfruit of all. Many other berries have tried to hold a flame to the blueberry purporting higher antioxidants and other things, but when you break it down the the sheer overall health AND deliciousness of them, blueberries win without even breaking a blueberry sweat.

"Dark berries, including blueberries, are a rich source of anthocyanins and pterostilbene. Anthocyanins are thought to be the probable reason why dark berries can influence brain activity. Older people can eat dark berries to improve memory. Though the mechanism behind this effect — increasing a growth factor called BDNF - could potentially work for young people as well, although this area of research is preliminary."(2)

If you have picked a lot of blueberries and are hoping to freeze them, it is best not to rinse them first. This is because blueberries are not grown in the ground, and they have a natural protective coating known as bloom. You may have noticed their waxy, somewhat cloudy coating when you've picked blueberries. Blueberries produce the bloom to help protect them against pests and bacteria, but another benefit of the blueberry bloom is that it is naturally nonstick. So before freezing do not rinse the blueberries or you will remove the coating and have to carefully dry the blueberries before freezing to help prevent then from sticking.

If you know the blueberries have been sprayed wash for sure, but dry them out in a single layer on clean tea towels or paper towels. Once dry you can go ahead and freeze. One tip is freezing the blueberries on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and then once frozen transfer to a ziploc bag.

When using frozen blueberries for smoothie recipes they don't have to be thawed, but you can give them a quick rinse before you use them. When you need thawed blueberries for a dessert recipe, cover the blueberries with room-temperature water and thaw them for about five minutes per cup. Then drain, dry, and use the blueberries.

Making fruit desserts requires using some nice, fresh fruit. If you can’t find the fresh fruit you’re looking for; you can also use canned or frozen fruit. Using fresh fruit will prevent you from getting moldy fruit in your dessert recipes. If you have some fresh fruit that you know you won’t use right away, the best bet is to freeze it to prevent it from growing mold. Learning about what kills mold, you will find out that mold spores can’t live in freezing temperatures, so mold won’t be able to survive on your fruit in the freezer. So freeze your blueberries for this recipe by laying them out flat on a cookie sheet and freezing them for a day. Then you can remove them from the cookie sheet and put them into bags. This is done so that the berries don’t freeze together and get stuck together.

References

(1) Dirty Dozen, EWG's 2018 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ (2017), Retrieved from https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php

(2) "4 science-based “superfoods” you should consider eating," Examine.com, published on 24 March 2015, last updated on 9 January 2018, https://examine.com/nutrition/4-science-based-superfoods-you-should-be-eating/



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