Blueberry Pie Cookies

Camping is one of my favorite summer activities.  Car camping, boat camping, backpacking...I love it all, and one of my favorite things to do after I arrive at the campsite is to relax with a good book and something tasty.  Most of the time, these are store-bought cookies or crackers.  Sometimes, they are tasty homemade pastries.  Recently, I've been dreaming of bringing along the ultimate summer baked good (pie, of course).

This camping trip could be improved with pie...

Unfortunately, pie is not very easy to transport when you're boating or hiking to your camp, and a pie squished into a tupperware container will likely become soggy.  So, for a recent hiking/boating/camping trip, I decided to test out a possible solution: pie cookies.

Pie cookies are just pie filling sandwiched between two circles of pie crust.  My hope was that they would be easy to pack, and easy to eat while enjoying the wilderness.

While planning this recipe, my biggest concern was the pie filling/pie crust ratio.  I knew that these were going to be very crust-heavy pies, and as delicious as pie crust is in a full pie, I wasn't sure how good it would taste in these cookies.  In an attempt to remedy this, I used a bit more sugar than usual in the pie crust, and a whole-wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour.  I knew, from my experiment with different flours, that I enjoyed the taste of whole-wheat pastry flour a bit more than all-purpose.  During that experiment, I also learned that the whole-wheat pastry flour was going to absorb water less well than all-purpose flour.  I was a little concerned that this might make the crust a little difficult to roll out, but decided to throw caution to the wind and try it anyway!

The crust was difficult to roll out.  Luckily, I was just cutting circles out of the dough and not using it for a full pie, so this did not ruin the crust.  I would not use whole wheat pastry flour in a full-sized pie - I'm pretty sure that would be a huge headache.

I think the extra sugar and tastier flour paid off - these were very yummy little cookies.  I was not disappointed in the amount of filling, and quickly gained back all the calories I lost hiking and kayaking by gobbling these down.

The pie cookies survived being stuffed in a backpack and thrown in the bottom of a boat.  Although they were a little squished and stuck together, the filling was juicy, and the crust was flaky (and not soggy) - which means they were perfect in my opinion.

Blueberry Pie Cookies
Makes approximately 32 3-inch pie cookies.

Ingredients for Pie Crust
2 ½ cups flour (whole wheat pastry or all-purpose)
6 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 ½ sticks cold unsalted butter
~½ cup ice water

Ingredients for Filling
2 ½ cups blueberries
½ cup sugar (my blueberries were a little sour, lower this if yours are riper)
juice and zest from ½ lemon
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Method

1. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt together with a fork.
2. Cube the butter and "cut" it into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter until there are no butter bits that are bigger than a pea.  Make sure you don't go smaller than this, however, since you'll start to lose flakiness if the butter is too small.
3. Add the ice water, a tablespoon or two at a time and use a fork to wet the flour/butter mixture. 
4. Keep adding until the dough just starts to hold together.  You don't want the dough too wet, and you don't want to mix in the water too much.  I find it useful to just use my hands to mix at this point.
5. Divide the dough in two, cover each half with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for a couple hours at least (overnight is best).  This is especially important with the whole wheat pastry flour since it makes the dough a little easier to work with.
6. Toss the blueberries, sugar, lemon juice and zest, butter, and cornstarch in a medium bowl.  Set aside.
7. Preheat your oven to 350° F.
8. Line the bottom of a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
9. Remove one of the covered dough halves from the refrigerator.  Divide this in half and roll out on a floured board.
10. Using a 3-inch round cutter, cut eight circles out of the pie dough.  Place these on the parchment paper, evenly spaced.
11. Spoon a small amount (5-6 blueberries and a little sauce) into the center or each pie circle.
12. Cut eight more circles out of the pie dough (you may have to gather the scraps and re-roll it out).  Place each circle on top of the blueberry-topped bottom circles.  Press down the edges with something thin (the top of a paintbrush or pen would work).  Brush with egg yolk and sprinkle with sugar.  Cut some small slits in the top.
13. Bake for 10-14 minutes, or until the filling is bubbly.  Cool on a wire rack.  Repeat in three more batches with the rest of the pie crust and filling.

Update - I'd previously said I'd used a 4.5" cutter. Turns out it was 3".