For weeks I have been trying to make the perfect blueberry crumble pie. So after several fails and a good few successes I thought I’d share not just one recipe, but a bit about the whole trial.
The first few attempts ended up very soggy and fluid. Blueberries have a tendency to turn into soup when you bake them in the oven. You could try and suck up that fluid by adding for example coconut flour – but an even better idea is to use chia seeds. They are supposed to be very healthy – just google them and you’ll find plenty of information!
First of all – Turn the oven to 180 C (350 F)
I’ve been using 300 g (about 10 ounces) blueberries for every pie. If they are frozen – thaw them first. I just put mine (in the pie form) in the oven while it was heating up.
To the (thawed) blueberries add 50 ml (about 3 tbsp’s) chia seeds and stir around a bit.
Then make the topping. And this is where I had the most experimenting…
In the end I found a combination of shredded coconut, ground flaxseeds and sliced almonds to make the best result – like this:
- 50 g (1.8 ounce) room-tempered butter, or coconut oil
- 100 ml (0.4 cup) shredded coconut
- 100 ml (0.4 cup) ground flaxseeds
- 50 ml (a bit more than 3 tbsp’s) almond slices
- 1 tbsp honey OR 1 teaspoon Goviosid / “Steviosa socker” or similar erythritol-stevia sweetener
- optional – some vanilla powder
- optional – 3 or 4 dried apricots, mixed / ground together with the flaxseeds
I added the sliced almonds after this pic was taken. Used no vanilla (since I had ran out) and chose butter and Goviosid this time. Apricots are ground with the flaxseeds, so you don’t really see them.
Adding the apricots will make the topping a bit sweeter, but the need for this depends on how much taste your blueberries have. The better the blueberries – the less need to make a sweet topping…. Shredded coconut also gives a certain sweetness, so if you are baking without coconut – I’d add the apricots.
Then just mix the topping using a fork or similar and spread over the blueberries.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes. Flaxseeds burn easily, so if you have them in the topping you might want to bake in the lower part, or cover with some foil towards the end… Then, once baked, leave the pie to cool down and also to let the chia seeds swell. 20-30 minutes is enough.
This (above) was the result of the “butter, shredded coconut, flaxseeds, sliced almonds, Goviosid, and apricots”
And this (above) was “coconut oil, shredded coconut, almond slices (150 ml – 0.6 cup), Goviosid and vanilla”
Personally – I prefered the flaxseed version.
As vanilla cream in both cases above I used coconut cream (the creamy part in the top of the can if you refridgerate the coconut milk) and added vanilla and honey.
You can also take whipped cream and add a bit vanilla, or mascarpone with honey and vanilla…. all, very yummy! 🙂
Experiment and find your favorite!
Enjoy!
Liesel