Help me bake a pie with frozen blueberries and plums?

November 23, 2015 7:52 PM

I have 2 or 3 cups of frozen blueberries and around the same amount of frozen and sliced (in quarters) plums. (Both fruits were picked and frozen by me this summer.) Can I make a pie with these fruits, together, that won't turn into soup?

The berries and plums were quite ripe when I froze them. Can I just add corn starch? Or something else? How much? Help me not let my family down!

posted by chowflap to Food & Drink (13 answers total)

Must it be pie? Blueberries and plums would go well in a cake.
posted by tomboko at 7:59 PM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would follow the rough recipe here for this rhubarb pie. It's very simple. I've used the basic template for many types of fruit pies, fresh and frozen, to wonderful results.

For yours I would go lighter on the sugar since plums are quite sweet on their own, and let the fruit sit in the flour for a good amount of time and make sure the sogginess has been mitigated, maybe add a bit more flour or cornstarch if necessary.
posted by phunniemee at 8:01 PM on November 23, 2015

- Thaw the fruit in the fridge to preserve the texture as much as possible.
- Drain the thawed fruit really well, then boil down the juice with some sugar to evaporate excess liquid and concentrate the flavor.
- Cool the juice and toss with the fruit and however much sugar you like in your pies.

According to Cook's Illustrated, tapioca starch and/or a grated apple help to hold together a blueberry pie. The apple works because it has a lot of pectin. Plums do too, so you might not need the apple.
posted by Frenchy67 at 8:03 PM on November 23, 2015

Yeah, I bet you can find something that will work. This recipe from King Arthur Flour- usually a very trustworthy source- specifies frozen berries and might be good to use as a starting point.
posted by charmedimsure at 8:04 PM on November 23, 2015

Don't panic. Once cooked, frozen fruit doesn't really end up releasing more liquid than fresh. Traditional fruit pie has a little syrup to it, though. Makes it fantastic with ice cream.

It's a teaspoon of corn starch per cup of fruit and well-vented, latticed, or absent top crust.

Also you can find recipes for this pie out there.
posted by zennie at 8:15 PM on November 23, 2015

Response by poster: Many of the blueberry pie recipes I have seen say to not thaw the berries beforehand. Will thawing them make them release too much juice? (I guess it doesn't matter if you're adding the reduced juice-syrup back to the pie?)
posted by chowflap at 8:17 PM on November 23, 2015

There is just no need to thaw the berries. They thaw really fast and the freezing has usually burst them. You treat them like fresh except the pie is in the oven a bit longer to cook.

People have varied opinions about how juicy a fruit pie should be. If you want less syrup, you can do a reduction in a pot, you can add a starch binder, or you can cook your open pie for a really long time (lower temp). Adding extra starch is the easiest.
posted by zennie at 8:36 PM on November 23, 2015

Blueberries are bland and plums acidic, so they should compliment each other. I would get the crust ready for the pie, cook and sugar the berries and plums quickly in a sauce pan, make it as sweet as you want, start with 1/4 cup sugar, add some lemon zest and 1/4 tsp cardamom, use two teaspoons of cornstarch to thicken at first, see how thick it is, add a half tsp more until you get the thickness. This is fast just get it to a boil without beating up the berries. Then throw it into the crust and add the top crust as you like. Bake at 350 until you smell the toasted crust. Look for the crust to brown. Put the pie low in the oven so the bottom of the crust cooks well.
posted by Oyéah at 10:46 PM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yum. If I were you I might try to rework this recipe for the fruit you have. Add more as needed to approximate the correct volume & liquid ratio.
posted by deludingmyself at 5:05 AM on November 24, 2015

Don't use a recipe that calls for cornstarch- it doesn't hold up in heat so the thickening will fail in the oven. Use a recipe that calls for tapioca flour instead. Tapioca flour is great for making non-soupy fruit pies.
posted by PorcineWithMe at 5:24 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd either toss the frozen fruit with a little bit of sugar and tapioca flour OR thaw, drain and boil down the juices with sugar, not both.
posted by sarajane at 5:29 AM on November 24, 2015

My go to fruit pie thickener is minute tapioca (assuming you're in the US...). They have proportions on the box. For one 9.5" pie (deep dish Pyrex pie plate) I'd use...some sugar, maybe half a cup, and probably close to a quarter cup minute tapioca. Mix them together with the fruit in a bowl and let sit for a few minutes, then scrape into a pie crust. Top with maybe a lattice crust. Hopefully the plum skins won't be too problematic.

Clafouti would be really good with that fruit combo too.
posted by leahwrenn at 6:32 AM on November 24, 2015

Does it have to be pie? I love this peach blueberry cobbler with its cornmeal topping, and imagine that you could sub plums for the peaches with no problem.
posted by Liesl at 7:25 AM on November 24, 2015