A Blueberry Pake

   In the last month or so, I finally decided to move to Houston, TX (shout out to my brother Chris!) So I have been thoroughly busy deciding what to take instead of making anything new. However, I had the day off on the fourth of July and I wanted to bake! I wanted something "American" - and I had a lot of blueberries just waiting to go bad before I could eat them all- so I immediately thought of making blueberry pie. I mentioned this idea to my boyfriend, who said, "oh I hate pie, I like cake better" and that blueberry pie dream was killed. Of course, I never really love fruit pies myself and I know how much work they take (hello lattice crust: my worst nightmare), so I wasn't entirely mad at my BF for pointing his preference out.

But what else could I make?
Of course, of course! A Pake!

    If anyone else out there is addicted to Drop Dead Diva, they will immediately know what I am talking about since Stacy's Pakery has been in the plot-line for the show for a while now.  For all those others though, a pake is a pie recipe mixed with a cake recipe. If you search for "pake" on google, you will get a fully made pie inside of a cake (aka too much work). Instead, my pake has a pie crust and the bottom half is fruit filling; the top half is a sour cream cake. Goodbye need for a lattice top.
First, I found two wonderful recipes online:

Blueberry Pake from Schooling at Home, the Classical Way 

How to make the world's best blueberry pie! from pickyourown.org

And then I combined the best parts of each along with some of my own troubleshooting (well, you know how it goes) and came up with a blueberry pake recipe that got me a half serious marriage proposal. (Put that in your hope chest and smoke it.)

blueberries and pie dough, plus a few other ingredients = a blueberry pake! Ingredients and Instructions (per 9 inch deep dish pie)

-->Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all ingredients (except pie crust) in a bowl and let meld, tossing occasionally as you finish up the other steps (~15 min).

• 3 cups of Blueberries - fresh
• 5 Tablespoons corn starch
• 3 Tablespoons water
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 2/3 cup sugar
• One 9 inch pie crust (mine was store-bought)

In a separate bowl, mix the sour cream cake topping:

• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 2 eggs 

 Let the pie crust thaw and then unroll and place into a slightly floured pie pan. Add some extra flour to the bottom of the crust because your berries will be extra juicy and you still want to have a firm crust. 

 Pour in the berry mixture, retaining some juice if there is too much liquid. Smooth out berries so that they are flat. Pour sour cream cake mixture on top and smooth this out as well. 

It is fairly easy to make a foil rim: just tear off a piece of foil enough to fit a little more than half way around the rim, then cut the piece in two (hot dog style). Now, cinch the two pieces together by folding a lip over twice. Do this on the other side and now you have a foil rim for your pie pan. Smush foil closer to pan as needed at the top.

Place a foil rim or pie shield around your pie for the first portion of baking (45 min.) Then take the pake out and remove the foil rim. Place the pake back into the oven until a toothpick inserted comes out clean (or at least without any sour cream globs on it), around 15-25 min.

 *Update: If you want another Pake recipe, check out my mini pumpkin pie pakes for this Thanksgiving!