Birthday Blueberries!

Just a quick one today, a pre-scheduled post seeing as today I'm super excited to be checking out the Elephant's Trunk Flea Market right now! :-)

Hope you all enjoyed my husband's guest post last week - wasn't it good!? Hehe, I loved the cake and was sad to eat the final slice, but I am still posting a little about my birthday...dragging on the great day a little longer!

We enjoyed a fantastic day hiking, at the farm and then blueberry picking!  This was so fun, I'd never done it before and it was even better than I thought.  A perfect time of day for it, and a beautiful farm to do it on!

Earlier this week I made some blueberry muffins - possibly the healthiest recipe I've ever made, especially as I can still call it cake!  They were really yummy, and gave us a delicious snack for our road trip and there are still almost 1.5 litres of blueberries left in the freezer for more blueberry makes and bakes when we get back.

Here's the recipe I used, and how they looked (apologies for only having one instagram photo, it was a rather rushed day packing and teaching piano the day before our trip!)... I do however have some phone photos from our time picking the blueberries, check them out below :-)

Ingredients (Makes 12):

225g plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp allspice
115g sugar
3 large egg whites
3 tbsp low fat margerine
150ml plain yogurt (I used 2% greek yoghurt as it is what I had in the fridge!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup fresh blueberries

Method:

1.  Line a 12-hole muffin tray with cupcake cases and pre-heat oven to 375°F/190°C.
2.  Sift the flour, baking soda, salt and half of the allspice into a large mixing bowl.  Add 6 tablespoons of the sugar and mix together.
3.  In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites together.  Add the margarine, yogurt, and vanilla extract and mix together well, then stir in the fresh blueberries until thoroughly mixed.  Add the fruit mixture to the flour mixture, then gently stir together until just combined.  Do not overstir the batter.
4.  Divide the muffin batter evenly among the 12 cups in the muffin tray.  Mix the remaining sugar with the rest of the allspice and sprinkle over the muffins.
5.  Transfer to a pre-heated oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until risen and golden.  Remove the muffins from the oven and serve warm, or place them on a cooling rack and let cool.

Fresh blueberries - nicer than any other blueberries I've ever tasted!

We filled a 2 litre basket each!  We have given some handfuls away, eaten some on their own, baked some into the muffins but also frozen some for another time.

The amazing fields and fields of blueberries!  And the great wagon who took us on a little tour around to our blueberry patch! 

Fresh blueberries and blueberry frozen yogurt (pre-dinner dessert!!) - yum!!

So far a delicious (and a little healthy?!) treat baked with these amazing fresh blueberries... Maybe there will be some more birthday blueberry posts coming soon!  Hope you're enjoying these final weeks of Summer before back to school begins, we're definitely trying to make the most of it!

My first pie!

There always has to be a first try.  And this time it was my first try at a pie!  We were heading over to our friend's place for the evening and I of course offered to bring a dessert - an excuse to try something new out :-)  However there was one catch - our friends were half way through their Lent of being vegan!!!  Hmm, no eggs, milk, cheese, anything you would usually find in baking!  Eek...what to do.  I was searching recipes but wasn't sure about preparing something specifically using vegan ingredients - so many different powders, milks crazy stuff I had never heard of.  And then the thought came to me, I could use a vegan shortening in a pie.  That would be the only substitution necessary but no butter or egg wash on top of the crust but I thought I'd give it a try and see how it went.

I think using the vegan shortening did effect the crust a bit but the taste was good and the filling wasn't effected by anything and I think we all enjoyed it!  

The next pie I make I will try with butter in the crust to see if there's a difference.  

I used this recipe here as well as her vegan pie crust link you'll find on there.  I loved the combination of pear and blueberries and the filling was nice and gooey.  So my crust isn't as pro looking as the one on her website but oh well - first try!

So some of the pastry was a little crumbly pre-cooking.

I seem to be missing a photo or two of the cooked pie so this is all I'm able to post right now but I'm pleased with how my first pie went and look forward to more pie-making soon :-)