Blackberry Lemon Thyme Crostatas

The smell of the lemon-thyme-vanilla bean sugar used to flavour the berries was out of this world, and the taste of the baked pie, the same.

I used frozen blackberries (and 100g of blueberries to make up the missing weight) and this whole wheat pastry to make the individual pies. These came together very quickly as the filling took just moments to toss together and the pastry was very easy to roll.

The recipe recommends using starch water (a cornstarch-water slurry) to help hold the pleats of the dough together. I’ve used this “glue” on wonton and egg roll wrappers but never before on pastry dough. It made the dough quite wet and prone to tearing so I reverted to my usual method of squeezing the pleated dough lightly to hold it in place. I didn’t use the recommended Flaky Dough recipe……perhaps it would have held up better.

I made these a few days in advance and baked them from frozen in honour of Pi Day.