Small Version of a Good Thing (Recipe: Mini Fried Blackberry Pies)

June 9, 2012 by Jackie Garvin 33 Comments

Fried pies are as familiar to Southerners as boiled peanuts and Moon Pies. We’ve been making them forever and a day. The construction is simple. It’s a crust filled with a sweet filling typically made of fruit or berries. The crust , made from pie or biscuit dough, is cut into small pieces, filled, folded over, crimped and drop into hot oil, cooking it briefly. The pie is removed from the hot oil to drain and cool. Sometimes they get rolled in sugar and sometimes they get frosted.

My Grandmother made these scrumptious treats a good bit. I only knew her to use dried apples for the filling. She would cook the apples in water to reconstitute them and add sugar for sweetening. She probably made her own dough early on, but I only remember her using canned biscuits. She rolled out the biscuits to flatten them and filled each one with apple filling. Her pies weren’t sugared or iced after frying. They were notable even in their simplest form.

We’re enjoying a good crop of blackberries from our backyard vines. I had the idea to make a blackberry filling for fried pies in the same manner as my Grandmother’s fried apple pies. The blackberries are too big to be used fresh in the pies.

The result would be a big lumpy, puffy piece of cooked dough. Plus, each pie would only be able to support one or two berries. Cooking the berries and mashing them seemed the best idea.

As I cooked the blackberries with water, sugar and lemon, I noticed the filling didn’t seem to thicken. I reached for some cornstarch to dissolve in water and add to the filling as a thickening agent. When the slurry was added to the blackberry mixture, it bubbled up and almost came out of the pot. That seemed odd to me but I kept stirring until the mixture returned to normal. Still, it wouldn’t thicken. I figured I either had more water in the mixture than I realized or the berries were juicier than I had anticipated. I repeated the procedure. And got the same results. The volcano erupted once again. As before, I stirred and the mixture returned to its normal state. But, it still didn’t thicken. Finally, it dawned on me that perhaps I should check the box of cornstarch. On the box written as plain as day was “baking powder”. It didn’t say a word about cornstarch. Then the bell went off. I had forgotten about a new box of baking powder packaged almost exactly like my box of cornstarch. Luckily, we do have the fine crop of blackberries in the backyard so I was able to start over. Two lessons I learned from this little fun experiment. First, baking powder is NOT a substitute for cornstarch. Secondly, keep the baking powder and cornstarch side by side in the pantry so I won’t make that mistake again. The second time would be really embarrassing. Unless, of course, I keep it to myself and not tell y’all.

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