It started raining this week and it only means one thing in my book: PIE SEASON!!! I have so many favorites. Lucky for me, almost all fruits make for a good pie. But what I love the most about pies is playing with lattice designs. Pies are one of those desserts where you can really let your imagination fly. With Halloween just a few weeks away, here is a fun idea for Mini Mummy Booberry Pies.

First let’s make our crust:

In a food processor, mix 1 1/4 cups of flour with a dash of salt:

Add 1/2 cup of super cold butter cut in small pieces:

Pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal:

Add 3 1/2 tbsp of ice cold water:

Pulse until the dough comes together. Almost there:

Done!

Place the dough on a piece of plastic wrap:

Form into a disk, wrap tightly and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes:

Now repeat the recipe to make the dough we will need for the lattice. No need to wash the food processor bowl.

Once the dough has had time to chill, preheat your oven to 425°F, flour your work surface, your rolling pin and your dough:

Roll out one of the disks to about 1/4″ thick:

For this recipe, I am using a mini tartelette pan from Williams-Sonoma. You can also use any individual pie dishes you have on hand.

Cut your dough into disks and place into each well:

Now let’s work on the filling.

In a food processor, place 4 cups of drained, thawed frozen blueberries with 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tsp lemon juice and 3 tbsp corn starch:

Mix for a few seconds to puree:

Spoon the filling into the pie shells. Fill a bit below the edge. The filling will expand while baking and you want to avoid spills:

Bake for 30 minutes. Take the pies out and let them cool.

In the meantime, let’s work on the lattice.

Take out the second disk of pie dough and roll it to 1/8″ thickness:

Cut into 1/2″ strips:

Place strips of dough across the top of each pie to resemble the bandage strips of a mummy.  Make sure to leave room for the mummy’s eyes.

Bake for 8 minutes. That’s just long enough to cook the strips but not enough to let them brown.

Now to make those bandages whiter, dust confectioner’s sugar all over the pies:

Here’s the magic: after 30 minutes, the moist pie filling will absorb the white sugar but the bandages will remain white. Magic! Here is what the same pie looks like after 30 minutes:

Finally, let’s work on the eyes. We are going to make them out of royal icing. If you don’t feel comfortable making icing or or don’t decorate cookies all that often, you can buy candy eyes from Wilton at Safeway or Target (they are about $3). I love making eyes. They are super easy to make and are great to keep on hand for future projects. Here is how to do it:

Prepare royal icing in white and black. I am using SweetSugarBelle’s recipe.

Add enough water to get both batches to flooding consistency (think shower gel) and pour into plastic bottles:

Squeeze out little dots of white icing onto parchment paper:

With the icing still wet, squeeze out just a drop of black icing:

Let them dry overnight. That’s it!

You can store these in an airtight container and keep for months!

Now the fun part. Right before serving, put the pies together by placing a pair of eyes in the space we had left on each pie. Remember to place the eyes right before your party. If you put them on the day before, the moisture from the pies will dissolve them:

Tadaaaa!!!

Happy Halloween!!!