There are a few meals and desserts I remember my mom making when I was growing up. The highlights and all-star favorites were beef stroganoff made in the pressure cooker and with wine, cheese souffle which I always got on my birthday, meatloaf, spritz cookies that always came around the holidays and raw blueberry pie, a late summer favorite!

Being from Oregon, blueberries were abundant. I remember going to U-Pick fields and spending hours filling my belly with blueberries and trying to keep my bucket filling as fast as my mom’s. We’d gather gallons of blueberries and pay a fraction of a fraction of what they cost in stores.

Once home, we’d wash all the berries and lay them out on several cookie sheets to pick through them removing stems, dried flower tips, pruned ones and anything else we wouldn’t want in our pie. As if I hadn’t gotten enough, I’d be sneaking handfulls of berries into my mouth for enormous bursts of flavor and freshness. For this indulgence of afternoon berry-binging, you can bet I was paying a blue and green tainted price later.

Once the berries were ready and after all the handfulls and snacking, there was usually just enough left for a pie or two and maybe some jam. Every occasional year my mom would help me make blueberry jam to enter into the local county fair jam competition. I never won, but my brother almost always won with his (my mom’s) blueberry jam with orange zest. I never thought this was a good jam but for some reason, all the older ladies that were judging did.

Anyway, the recipe and instructions for the raw blueberry pie are “easy as pie”. Note that the crust is baked and a glaze is made over the stove. But the bite you take from the chilled and completed pie will be full of delicious raw berries. Also, you can replace the blueberries with your preferred berry, strawberry, blackberry…

You’ll want to start by making your dough with your favorite recipe or mine below.

Pie Crust Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups flour (I like to get the unbleached flour)
• 1/2 tsp of salt (I like to use pink Himalayan salt)
• 1/2 cup or one stick of cold butter
• 1/4 cup of cold water

Pie Crust Instructions

1. Use a large knife to cube or chop the cool butter into smaller pieces to more easily blend with the dry ingredients.
2. Mix the salt into the flour in a big bowl.
3. Dump the small pieces of butter into the flour bowl and with a fork, potato masher or pastry cutter, blend the dry ingredients evenly with the flour.
4. Adding only tablespoons of the water at a time, mix in the water but stop adding if the dough becomes a little slimy. This would mean you’ve added too much, but it’ll still work.
6. Take the ball of dough out of the bowl and onto a clean flat surface to knead and continue mixing all the ingredients together and more evenly.
7. Place the dough into the fridge for 20 minutes to several days. I like to leave anything I make with dough for about 24 hours but time doesn’t always permit.
8. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees farenheit. Remove from the fridge and on a clean dry surface dusted with flour, roll out the dough into a round-ish flat disc about 1 ft in diameter and roughly 1/4 inch thick.
9. Gently lift the disc of dough into the 9 inch pie pan letting it sink into the bottom of the pan and edges hang over the side.
10. Use a knife to trim the crust edges that hang over the sides of the pan and for extra style use two fingers on one hand and your thumb on the other to pinch and mold the edge into a rippled pattern.
11. Poke holes with a fork into the bottom of the pie crust and let bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden brown.
12. Let the pie shell cool while you prepare the berry glaze.

Blueberry Glaze Ingredients

• 1 cup mashed blueberries
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup corn starch
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Blueberry Glaze Instructions

1. Pour the water into the pan over a medium flame. Mix in the sugar and corn startch
2. Add the mashed blueberries and lemon juice and stir regularly
3. The mixture will condense down to a sticky, thick glaze

Blueberry Pie Ingredients

• Baked pie shell
• 1 block of room temperature cream cheese sweetened to taste
• 4 cups of fresh blueberries
• Berry glaze

Blueberry Pie Instructions

1. Once the pie crust and pan have cooled, take the room temperature cream cheese and add sugar to taste. I like it to be sweeter than tart.



2. Apply the cream cheese mixture over the entire face and sides of the pie crust.
3. While the glaze is still hot pour over the fresh berries and gently stir to cover each berry with the glaze.
4. Pour the entirety of the glazed berries into the pie shell
5. Let the pie set and chill in the fridge for about two hours
6. Serve and enjoy!