maine blueberries Archives - Wild Blueberries

The 1 Easy Trick Professional Bakers Use for the Best Blueberry Pies

There’s a hot local bakery in Portland, Maine, that’s churning out hundreds of pies a week all year long but especially during the holiday season. At the top of the bakery’s popularity list is Wild Blueberry Pie. In fact, Two Fat Cats Bakery scoops out 210-pounds of frozen Maine Wild Blueberries a week into its delicious pies, scones, muffins, and cakes – that’s seven 30-pound boxes. “We make a batch of 10-15 blueberry pies a day,” says bakery owner Stacy Begin. “In the summer we can’t keep up with the demand.” We visited Two Fat Cats Bakery and chatted with Stacy about why she thinks Wild Blueberry Pie is hands-down her top-selling pie – no matter what the season! She also busts the myths about using frozen Wild Blueberries in pie making, shares some tips on how to use them and says it’s the only way to go to make the best Wild Blueberry Pie.

What’s behind the popularity?

Well, it’s a couple of things. People who come to Portland have heard so much about Maine Wild Blueberries and they want to try them. For tourists it’s on their to-do list, along with trying a whoopie pie and a lobster roll. Everyone loves Maine Wild Blueberries and Blueberry Pie never goes out of season – even over the holidays.

What makes the Wild Blueberry so distinctive?

Two things. First, is size. The Wild Blueberry is much smaller and this gives it a special quality. Second is taste – it’s sweeter and so different from a cultivated berry. I think people who know the story of the Wild Blueberry – how it’s native to Maine and how it’s grown and harvested – they understand that it’s a very intriguing and special berry.

Are frozen berries better for Wild Blueberry Pie?

Definitely. Frozen Wild Blueberries are more dependable because they were picked at the height of their ripeness, which preserves their great taste and texture. Not only that, but there are a couple of myths out there. One is that frozen fruit is not as good in a pie. This is just false. At Two Fast Cats, we always use frozen Wild Blueberries in our pie. A second mistake is that people allow the berries to thaw first. We never thaw the berries in advance.

So how do you make the pie?

The trick is to use frozen Wild Blueberries and keep them frozen.
Don’t thaw them out in advance.
Pour your dry ingredients (sugar, thickener and spices) over the frozen berries and stir gently.
Let everything sit for 15 minutes.
While this mixture sits, the fruit starts to absorb the sugar and the thickener.
The sugar will cling to the fruit and this is exactly what you want.
Give it all a good stir.
Then, pop everything into your pie shell and bake it.

What do people say about your pie?

What we usually hear is: “This is the best pie I have ever had.” I believe it’s not just due to our techniques or our recipes, I think it’s because a lot of people have never had the Maine Wild Blueberry and it’s so different than a cultivated berry pie. It’s an awakening to them. The blueberries are smaller, there lots of ‘em, so you get that delicious taste of the fruit.

Are there any special ingredients in your pie?

We make a very traditional Wild Blueberry Pie—and there is really no secret to the recipe. We just take the time to make it right. A pie can be time consuming and there is a temptation to take short cuts. If you really want a good pie, you have to put the time into it and use the very best ingredients.

Who buys your pies?

Well we all know that Mainers love their pie and we sell to a lot of local people. Tourists love them too and once they’ve tasted our Maine Wild Blueberry Pie, they want to visit again. For them, it’s like a taste of summer. We also sell to the Portland Lobster Company, which dishes up a ton of lobster and Blueberry Pie in the summertime.

Where do you get your berries?

We buy our Maine Wild Blueberries from Wyman’s and Allen’s, both are Maine growers with long histories. We get weekly deliveries of frozen berries throughout the year.

What are some favorite recipes that use Wild Blueberries?

We make a Bumbleberry Pie that uses local apples, rhubarb, raspberries, and Maine Wild Blueberries. This is also known as Heritage Pie – and it’s a recipe that people have made for generations. It’s traditionally made at the end of the season with whatever fruits people had left on hand from the summer.

Make your holiday complete with a Wild Blueberry pie from Two Fat Cats bakery or make your own using this delicious recipe! For other wild twists on traditional Thanksgiving side dishes take a look Danielle Omar’s recipes: Wild Blueberry Relish and Wild Blueberry Stuffing. Danielle is a registered dietitian, clean-eating coach, teacher and cookbook author and enjoys sharing plant-based recipes and nutrition strategies on her Food Confidence blog.

New England Memories Are Incomplete Without Wild Blueberries

Sunny Jennings shares plenty of wonderful dishes on her blog Tantra Cooking. Tantra, a method of cooking that puts the focus on the process of making the meal, allows us to combine our passion for whole, healthy food with the personal relationships that truly sustain us.

Jennings says wild blueberries are her favorite fruit, and calls them “naturally sweet and perfect.” This week, she shares her New England memories of wild blueberry picking and cooking, exclusively with Wild About Health.

I REMEMBER EVERYTHING about living in the hills of New England through a rosy glow of nostalgia, especially summers, my many, wonderful girlfriends and blueberry season.

We all anticipated wild blueberry season and would begin getting together our recipes weeks ahead. Old recipes had been handed down through the families, new ones were usually clipped from Yankee Magazine and many were experimental works in progress. While we ate blueberries every day of the season, one day each August my friends and blueberries came together. It was magic.

Although I lived in the verdant hills far from a city, I was blessed to live in a neighborhood with other houses nearby. Most had women near my age and all were wonderful cooks or bakers. Each year, we would plan a morning hike on our closest mountain. We carried empty bags up the mountain and brought back down bags filled with wild blueberries for an all-afternoon baking event. Often, it rained on those mornings, which only seemed to make the event even more special. Picture us: no make up, hair yanked back under baseball caps, blue teeth and tongues, wet clothes and muddy boots. Yes, these are the girls gone wild for blueberries.

While I routinely used blueberries all kinds of ways, that day was dedicated to deserts and lots of sugar!

We each had several quarts to work with and the six kitchens closest to one another became a communal culinary site. We cooked that way for other large events, however, one Saturday each August, we created the largest wild blueberry test kitchen on the planet. Or, so we told ourselves. We told stories, caught up on our news, laughed, experimented, carefully or casually measured ingredients, shared equipment and gently critiqued each creation as it reached its optimal temperature. We loved our time together, and each of us carried timers hooked to our waists to remind us to race back and check on whatever was in the oven or refrigerator. Amazingly, we never lost a dish to inattention. Hot crumbles and crisps, warm pies, cakes and chilled trifles, came out beautifully as the native girls passed their generations of family knowledge on how to work with wild blueberries. For one day each year, we didn’t worry about whether our jeans would zip the following week and delved into pure yummy.

None of us had secret ingredients or recipes we refused to share. That isn’t the New England way, and we were all about helping one another develop even better recipes.
Now that I no longer live there, I keep my eyes open for wild blueberries, and I’m thrilled to have found them at better produce outlets. Not only do they allow me to feel connected to my wonderful friends in New England, but each is a sweet gift of flavor as it bursts in my mouth. It’s easy to forget how healthful they are! Over the years, I’ve cut back on the mountains of sugar we used during our blueberry baking marathons. Fortunately, blueberries don’t actually need sugar to sweeten them. They are naturally sweet,
naturally perfect.

We all have our favorite pie and crumble recipes, so today, I’ve included an updated recipe that is so healthy, I can enjoy it nearly every day. It’s a Wild Blueberry and Quinoa.

Add spice to your life in the kitchen.

Sunny Jennings, at www.Tantracooking.com.

Wild Blueberry and Quinoa Parfait

Most of my girlfriends from the gym begin their days with Greek yogurt, granola and blueberries. That’s a great start before our workouts. I’ve switched over to this quinoa recipe, which has the added benefit of Omega-3s. Also, the use of honey and walnuts reminds me of wonderful Greek deserts.

By cooking the quinoa the night before, I can assemble the dish, eat and get in half a workout before I wake up!

First Spring Look: Maine’s Wild Blueberry Barrens

A panoramic view of wild blueberry barrens near Meddybemps in Maine’s Washington County, taken today, March 24th. Over 60,000 acres of blueberry farmland stretch across Maine, providing an average 70 million pounds of berries each year. Photos courtesy of Geoffrey Leighton.

Spring is officially here, and for fields being prepared for the wild blueberry harvest, that means the first show of growth which evolves into the astonishing blue blooms that cover the land in late summer.

Maine and Eastern Canada is exclusive territory for wild blueberries. Over 60,000 acres of blueberry farmland stretch across Maine alone, providing an average 70 million pounds of berries each year. Native to these weather-challenged regions, wild blueberries are naturally resilient. They have evolved to grow in acidic soil, thrive through wildly changing temperatures, and use their natural UV protection to survive unshielded in summer sun.

Each wild blueberry crop is the result of a two-year cycle of variable and unpredictable conditions. Crop development is dependent upon the first season’s spring and summer, the extent of potentially injurious frost, the amount of winter snow that provides protection, as well as the next year’s spring and summer weather. Abundant snow is an advantage for wild blueberry production, and this year was a windfall. Snow, in addition to providing protection to the plant, provides plenty of moisture which can increase the size of the bud and the potential to have more fruit per plant.

The plant’s heartiness is all part of the mystique of this fabulous fruit: the result is a naturally healthy antioxidant-rich berry with a distinctive taste and variations in color that can’t quite compare to its cultivated counterparts in other parts of the world.

Snowy winters are beneficial to the crop and can mean bigger bud sizes and more fruit per plant. The spring season brings green leaves and white blossoms of fruit before
late summer turns the fields blue.

These fields would not have seen much activity over the winter months. Growers usually spend little time on the barrens during the winter unless they are engaged in expanding fields or posting farm land to ensure protection from snowmobiles. Families that farm wild blueberry fields would have been doing seasonal winter work or working in other businesses. Some would likely have been engaged in off-season education in an effort to maintain knowledge of farming techniques and regulations, or traveling to farm shows in search of equipment and supplies or to purchase bees.

While these “first looks” at the spring barrens show them sporting some winter baggage, they will soon come to life and present green leaves and delicate white-pink blossoms. Those blossoms will gradually turn their eponymous blue in late July and early August before turning to a crimson red in the fall.

Here’s to a strong season for wild blueberry harvesters!

Read more about wild blueberry growing and harvesting.

At Blueberry Harvest Time, Picking at Peak Means an Endless Summer

Ah, summer. If only we could extend the colorful, fresh bounty of the season all winter long. But wait a minute – it seems we can. There are millions of pounds of wild blueberries currently being captured and quick frozen at their very peak of flavor and nutrition. We can use them at our discretion any time of year.

August is harvest season, and that means efforts to provide us with an endless summer, at least when it comes to berries, are going on right now. Thank goodness! Enjoying flavorful blues from the freezer for breakfast, desserts, entrees, and salads is one of the best ways to integrate potent nutrients into your diet, get your required daily servings of fruits and veggies, and bask in a little taste of summer gone by.

If you’ve ever wondered what goes into harvesting this antioxidant and anti-aging hero, here’s a little bit of blueberry back-story just in time for harvest season.

Barrens in Bloom

Remember that wilds are different from cultivated berries: they are smaller, they showcase an array of color variations and flavor that ranges from sweet to tart, and their high skin-to-pulp ratio means they are super-concentrated with powerful antioxidants. Also called “low-bush blueberries,” wilds are exclusive to the regions of Maine and Eastern Canada where large stretches of barrens produce this indigenous fruit – over 60,000 acres of blueberry farmland stretch across Maine alone, providing an average 70 million pounds of berries each year. Canadian provinces including Nova Scotia, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland also boast robust wild blueberries crops. It’s here that they have naturally evolved to thrive in the challenging acidic soils and under the environmental stresses of changing temperature that the four diverse seasons provide. The result is the distinctive color, plant height, taste, and fruit size of the wild blueberry.

To take best advantage of the flourishing fruit, beginning at the end of August, farmers throughout Maine and Canada engage in a commercial harvesting process which originated back in 1874.

Talk of the Town

August is the culmination of a two-year growing cycle; growers rotate their crop by harvesting half of their acreage each year. For local growers, the process incorporates a unique dedication to agricultural practices that ensure healthy crops for generations to come. But the crop’s success is dependent on many factors both in and out of a blueberry farmer’s control. High yield depends on moisture, winter snow coverage, a lack of damaging frosts, and bee pollination. Farmers hope for high numbers of fruit per plant to indicate a productive season – blossoms average five or six per bud but can top 15 if conditions are good.

During harvest season, towns that are home to large wild blueberry farms are focused on the season’s take. The crop is clearly a source of pride: discussions in local shops in areas like Machias revolve around the health and abundance of the year’s crop, and dessert in local restaurants is always blueberry pie. Fair and festival preparations are in full swing, and the towns buzz with activity as populations swell with those involved and employed with the harvest.

Tradition & Technology

While stories of migrant workers traveling to Down East Maine to engage in dawn-till-dusk labor to clear the barrens of their fruit do still paint an accurate picture, today, capturing wild blueberries at the height of taste and nutrition requires a mixture of traditional and high-tech methods.

Hand raking is a tradition that has held since the onset of commercial harvesting, but roughly half of modern operations use mechanized harvesting. While some may mourn the lost art of raking by hand, mechanizing means growers can mow the grounds, a practice that is more environmentally sound than traditional burning. It also lessens their dependence on hard-to-find hand labor. Cleaning processes in factories also use state-of-the-art computer controlled equipment, ensuring only ripe tasty blueberries end up in the carton, tub, bag or pouch, at the other end of the process.

Picked at Peak

While fresh cartons of berries are a welcome sight in late summer, in fact, 99% of the wild blueberry crop is frozen, using the individually quick freezing method (IQF) which allows for the fast preservation of taste, nutrition, and antioxidant power. IQF blueberries can remain frozen for over two years without losing their flavor or nutritional value. While the fresh-pack industry is very small, it has garnered growing interest from farmers because of the added value that comes with eliminating processing. Some farmers even freight fresh berries out-of-state to places as far flung as Texas, so buyers can enjoy the taste of the indigenous wild fruit straight from the field.

It’s the dedication of growers and their efforts during the harvest season that has made this unique fruit with its taste, nutritional attributes, and overall mystique the health icon it is today. So take some time to celebrate this delicious gift that gives all year long!

Wild Blueberries: The Pick of the Season

This season, industry reports indicate a banner year for the lauded berry. While farmers are busy in the fields, you can get a taste of the harvest, too. Many farms offer u-pick opportunities – it’s a perfect summer family activity, and even better, one that culminates in a cake, cobbler or pie.

If you can’t get out to the field yourself, don’t worry. August is the month where wild blueberries practically come to you. You’re guaranteed to find quarts at gas stations, convenience stores, farm stands and on the roadside.

Pick your own in Maine or find farms in Canada where you can pick your own berries.

Bake a Lemon Glazed Wild Blueberry Cake or a Wild Blueberry Crisp with your booty from the field.

Find a local supplier of wild blueberries.

Learn more about the wild blueberry harvest and the importance of blueberry bees.