Avid Baker's Challenge: Blueberry Galette with Lemon Ginger Ice Cream

This month's Avid Baker's Challenge recipe is the Glazed Apricot-Plum Galette on page 228 of The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge. I was planning to make my galette for a dinner party but one guest is allergic to plums, so I decided to use blueberries instead of the apricots/plum combo. This is my Blueberry Galette.

I absolutely love blueberries and since they are now in season, I've been getting two pints per week added on to my Boston Organics (love!) delivery. Over the past five or so weeks, I've made Blueberry Crumble, Blueberry Muffins (from Baking with Julia), Warm Cinnamon-Spiced Blueberry Cake (from ABC's The Weekend Baker) and Blueberry Crisp with the blueberries left over from this recipe. Wow, I'm surprised my skin hasn't turned blue!

For this week's Blueberry Galette, I also wanted to make some homemade ice cream. I decided that lemon and ginger would be the perfect flavors to go with blueberries. My Lemon Ginger Ice Cream is detailed in a separate post.

my finished galette

The recipe for the galette crust is from The Weekend Baker. Once again, I struggled with a recipe from this book. Frustrating. The dough for the crust was pretty easy to make and work with (despite it being 90+ and humid), but during cooking it split open in several places and most of the blueberry juice leaked out onto the sheet pan. I know that blueberries release a lot of juice, but it seems that many other ABC bakers had a similar problem using different kinds of fruit, so I do think it was the dough. Although, I will add that even though the bottom of the galette cooked in its own juices, it still had a firm, cooked bottom crust, which I wasn't expecting.

The other thing that was very difficult was that after baking and cooling the galette "slightly" (not very specific!) you have to use two large spatulas to lift it onto the serving plate. I could have used about 3 extra hands for this part. Due to the juices having leaked out, the galette was almost suctioned onto the parchment paper. Trying to lift it off the parchment - while not completely breaking it in half - was a huge challenge. I ended up using a huge spatula and two cardboard cake rounds to transfer it. But, in the end, I got it onto the serving plate in one piece and everyone at dinner loved it, so I guess that's all that matters!

Here is the recipe for my blueberry filling:

2 pounds fresh blueberries (I used slightly more than 2 lbs but about 1 lb of this mixture was used for my Blueberry Crisp)
juice from 2 lemons (about 1/4 cup)
zest from 2 lemons (about 2 heaped tablespoons)
2/3 c sugar (to taste, 1/2 would have been fine since the crust and crisp topping were slightly sweet)
3 T cornstarch
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t salt

Pour the lemon juice over the blueberries and mix gently so you do not crush the berries. Combine the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add the sugar mixture to the blueberries and mix (gently) until the berries are coated. Pour into the middle of the galette dough or, for the crisp, spoon into ramekins.

mise en place for the crust

I prefer to mix my pie crusts by hand, instead of a food processor,
so I can feel how the dough is coming together

after adding the water and lemon juice, I turned it onto the counter-top to finish it.
I used my bench scraper to finish cutting all the ingredients together.

for a tender crust, stop when everything has just come together

fresh blueberries - yum!

mise for the filling

so sweet and lemony, I could have just eaten the berries like this

the berries go into the center and the edges are folded up toward the middle

voila! The crust gets a brushing of milk and sprinkling of sugar before baking.

finally got it safely onto the serving dish

served with my homemade lemon ginger ice cream...
the combinations of flavors was fabulous!

Bye for now...