Donna Hay's Blueberry Pie

Having friends over was the perfect excuse to make a delicious pie! This recipe for blueberry pie is taken from Donna Hay's Seasons cookbook (Donna Hay 2009). It was originally for 6 small pies but I decided to just make a nice big one and serve it with some cream and ice cream. This pie has a beautiful almond meal and sugar bottom layer that gives the pie a nice flavour and crunch. 

Ingredients:

 2x 200g sheets store-bought shortcrust pastry, thawed
 375g blueberries
 2 tbs caster (superfine) sugar
 1 tsp lemon juice
 1/2 cup (60g) almond meal
 2 tbs plain (all-purpose) flour
 1/4 cup (55g) caster (superfine) sugar, extra
 40g butter, melted
 1 tsp vanilla extract
 1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
 1 egg lightly beaten
 granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 180'C (355'F).

Combine blueberries, sugar and lemon juice in a bowl. Set aside. Combine almond meal, flour, extra sugar, butter, vanilla and lemon rind in a bowl. Set aside. Line a lightly greased pie dish with one sheet of shortcrust pastry and cut to fit. With the other sheet of pastry, cut it into strips and set aside. 

Place the almond meal and sugar mixture in the pie dish and spread evenly. Pour blueberry mix on top and place strips on top in a lattice shape. Brush the pie with the egg and sprinkle with granulated sugar. 

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the top is golden. 

Donna Hay (2009). Donna Hay Seasons: the best of donna hay magazine. Sydney, Australia: HarperCollinsPublishers.

Dark Brown Sugar Chocolate Cupcakes

I love using brown sugar instead of caster (superfine) sugar. This time, I tried it with dark brown sugar. It gave the cupcakes this amazing molasses type quality. Very good. So good in fact, we ate them all in one night. I also swapped the cocoa powder for hot chocolate powder as I don't like my chocolate cupcakes too chocolatey but you can ignore that and just use cocoa. 

115g (4oz) butter, softened115g 
(4oz) caster (superfine) sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
90g (3oz) self-raising flour
2 tbs hot chocolate powder

Icing

2 tbs cocoa powder
1 cup icing sugar
2 tbs water


I didn't actually measure anything when I did the icing. However, I am pretty sure that this is what I did or at least will be close. 


This is a generic cupcake recipe from the Love Food collection (Susanna, T. 2009). 

Preheat oven to 190'C (375'F) and line a 1 one dozen muffin tray with patty pans. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs. Sift in the flour and hot chocolate powder/cocoa powder and fold into mixture. Spoon mix into the patty pans and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes or you can put a skewer inside and it comes out clean. Mix the icing sugar and cocoa powder with water. If mixture is to wet, add more icing sugar.  If mixture is too dry, add a tiny bit of water. Wait until the cupcakes cool and pour the icing on top.

Susanna, T. (2009). 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & other tempting treats. Parragon Books Ltd.