Blueberry Turnovers

So, these were good. Very good. I thought that for the work involved, I would rather just make a pie. Doug disagreed, saying that he can't just pick up a piece of pie and eat it on the couch without utensils. Fair enough. I did like the crust to filling ratio, as I am a huge pie crust fan. I got the idea from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible, but didn't end up following her recipe. I read through the entire article on turnovers, and noticed she didn't cook the filling for her blueberry version. I thought this was weird, and I far prefer the taste of cooked blueberry filling. So, I went off of on my own. This is what I came up with.

Pie Dough:

I decided to add apple cider vinegar to the dough. I had read that this made the dough easier to roll out. I didn't like the flavor it added when I tasted the raw dough, but couldn't tell the difference after it had been cooked.

2 sticks very cold unsalted butter, cut into one inch pieces.
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4.5 ounces cold cream cheese, also cut into inch pieces
2 tablespoons ice water
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Place flour and salt in a food processor and pulse until combined. Add the cold butter and cream cheese and pulse until the butter crumbles are roughly the same size of peas. Add the water and vinegar through the feed tube while pulsing. The dough will still be in pieces (do NOT overprocess) with obvious butter crumbs. Dump your dough out onto a clean surface with plastic wrap readily available. Divide into ten mounds (yes, ten) and work quickly to knead each mound once over with the palm of your hands. Quickly gather each mound together so it is the shape of a small hockey puck. Wrap in plastic wrap, and squeeze over the plastic wrap until the dough is a cohesive round. This whole process should take no more than five minutes. The point is to keep the butter as cold as possible, so you work it as little as you can (hands are quite warm). Put each round as it gets wrapped up in the fridge for 20 minutes before you roll them out.

Have all purpose flour ready when you roll out the dough. I usually start rolling with the plastic wrap still on until it it slightly flattened. I then sprinkle some flour on a clean work surface, unwrap my pie dough, flour the top of the now flattened round, and roll out the dough. If you don't have a rolling pin, I've used bottles of olive oil and bottles of wine before. They worked pretty well. Keep moving the dough around, and roll by starting at the center of the dough and rolling outward. For turnovers, you should roll out 10 six inch rounds that are around 1/4 inch thick. If this were a real pie, you'd only have two large rounds that roll out to be...much bigger. Put all of the rounds back in the fridge while you make your filling.

Filling:

3 cups fresh blueberries
1/4 granulated sugar
1.5 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon almond extract (not necessary, I probably wouldn't add this again)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon allspice

Toss these all together them dump in a saucepan over medium/low heat and cook until around half of the blueberries are popped.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Take each dough round out of the fridge one at a time. Spoon around 1/4 cup in the center of each round. Take the bottom of the dough, and pull over the top. Turn over the edges of the dough to seal in the dough. I wish I had taken pictures here, but my hands were pretty dough-y and I didn't want to get my camera all gross. Hopefully this makes sense. Brush the turnover with egg glaze (1 egg diluted with a little water) and if you'd like, sprinkle with some extra sugar. I like to use Sugar in the Raw for that sort of thing because I think the sugar crystals look neat. Transfer the turnover to the lined baking sheet, which you're keeping in the fridge while you work through the rest of the turnovers. Poke holes with a knife in each turnover before you cook so the whole thing doesn't explode. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. They'll look something like this:


Here is a picture from mid snack:


They kind of reminded me of the apple pies at McDonalds.


I'm not sure if they're more suitable for dessert of breakfast. Maybe they're good for both. These were too big for me to eat, so perhaps next time I would made mini turnovers...but rolling out 20 rounds of dough, even little, would be kind of a pain. I'll think about it.