When Johnny wants to make a crowd pleasing dessert with freshly picked blueberries, he pulls out a pie recipe from Swansi Shepherd, a member of the family that first planted blueberries on the farm more than 50 years ago.

Today he's sharing that handwritten recipe with us.

We're making a sweet, juicy, old fashioned, double crust blueberry pie.

[drum fill] - [Johnny] Sheri welcome.

- [Sheri] Thank you.

- To my kitchen.

- Thank you.

- [Johnny] I am so excited you're here.

I'm probably more excited that I didn't have to pick all those blueberries.

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Walter and I picked the berries and then he dropped me and the berries off at the porch, and now you're stuck with me.

- Here we go.

- [Sheri] What are we gonna make?

- Exactly.

We're gonna make a blueberry pie.

We're gonna start out with a bowl of sugar.

- [Sheri] Uh huh.

- [Walter] And we need to add flour to it.

- Just good ol' all-purpose flour?

- [Johnny] Yeah.

All purpose flour.

- All right.

Okay.

- Dump two teaspoons of cinnamon.

- Okay.

Isn't it amazing how cinnamon tends to go with all fruit pies.

- [Johnny] Right?

It's, it's really good.

- [Sheri] Okay.

Got a little bit of that.

- And then a dash of salt.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- Whatever you think.

- [Sheri] I think that's dash worthy, don't you?

- Absolutely.

And so we just sort of stir all this together, - [Sheri] Mmhmm.

- Get it mixed up.

What we wanna do is put two tablespoons of - Okay.

- [Johnny] This mixture in the bottom of the pie.

And we do that because it helps when the berries, you know, start cooking, it helps thicken that berry juice.

- [Sheri] It catches those juice.

- That's right.

- [Sheri] Does that look about right?

- [Johnny] Yep, that's about right.

And what we wanna do is, is just sort of get that sort of good, and, - [Sheri] Yeah, we're just leveling it off.

- [Johnny] Leveling it off.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- So now what we wanna do is, we want to take our berries.

- Yeah, which are here, and these just have been rinsed.

- Yep.

- So this is, okay.

And this looks to be maybe eight cups.

- [Johnny] About eight cups of berries, - Okay.

- [Johnny] So about four cups per pie.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- [Johnny] That's what you want to do.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- [Johnny] So then we're gonna add, give that to you.

If you'll just dump the rest of that, - Oh gosh, I can do that.

- [Johnny] In here.

- [Sheri] So you're just gonna stir that enough to just basically dust these berries in that flour and sugar mixture.

- [Johnny] That's right.

You just want to coat, coat this really, really well.

- [Sheri] And what amazes me is, I mean, these berries were still on the bush like an hour ago.

Look how quick this is and how immediate it is.

- Well, and that's the, the most brilliant thing.

And in this particular recipe, I said I adore it.

It's because it's so simple and it allows the berries really just to be what they want to be.

- [Sheri] Yeah.

- Which is this big burst of flavor.

So what we want to do, let me give that to you, split this between the two pies.

- [Sheri] So it's really full.

But they're gonna cook down, right?

- That's right.

They're gonna cook down.

Now we're gonna, we're gonna do, I guess it's about two teaspoons of the lemon juice sort of over the top of it.

I think lemon juice really makes the berries shine.

- [Sheri] I love your technique of squeezing the seeds through your fingers.

- [Johnny] Well you know, it's just not worth dirtying another dish.

- [Sheri] No it's not.

And if you lose a seed in there, we're never gonna find it.

- [Johnny] But this blue, this juice is just... - [Sheri] Oh that smells so good.

- [Johnny] Right?

So, at this point we want to take some dollops of butter.

- Mmhmm.

- [Johnny] And just because you know, everything's better with a little butter.

- Oh heck yeah.

Plus you do need a little bit of, you know, fat in this and it's gonna, I bet it's gonna make this gorgeous rich juices, isn't it?

- [Johnny] It is.

[happy synth music] So now we're gonna put a top pie crust on it.

It's in the fridge because we want to keep that pastry really cold.

Cold pastry equals flaky crust.

- [Sheri] Oh yeah.

Look how firm that is.

That's a great idea.

[paper rustling] Ta-dah.

- [Johnny] This is probably my favorite part.

- [Sheri] Do you have a technique or do you just say if it's crimped, it's crimped.

Or are you, gonna do like some sort of macrame things, gonna show me up here?

[laughing] - I'll tell you the reason this is the, I mean.

You know, I cook a lot, and in this kitchen I cook a lot.

And for a lot of people it's usually loud here on the farm.

- [Sheri] Yeah.

- [Johnny] So this is the time where I get to like, sort of do my meditation.

- Yeah.

- And so when I'm crimping this blueberry pie in the summertime, this is sort of what I call my summer meditation.

- I love this.

- Yeah, and is the time really that I get by myself and you know, in and on the farm 'cause we have so much going on with the berry season and all that, but.

- So we don't, we don't dock or anything, we're good?

- [Johnny] I do, I do cut a little, let's cut a little slit.

- All right.

- In the top here just, - [Sheri] For steam?

- [Johnny] A little bit of steam.

Because this will get really, really juicy, as you saw these berries are big.

- I love it.

- Yeah.

- And look at this.

Look how easy this so easy is.

- Yep.

- So then we just put them in the oven and about how long does it take to bake?

- So it takes about an hour.

- Ah, let put them in the oven.

And it's okay to do two?

They can just cook side by side.

- [Johnny] Absolutely, Yep.

- I love this.

[cheerful music] [timer buzzer] - [Johnny] I think they're ready.

- [Sheri] I heard the timer go off.

- [Johnny] All right.

- Oh my gosh, listen to that.

You can hear the bubbling.

- [Johnny] Yep.

Look at that.

[gasping] - Oh, look at this.

- See that?

- Yes.

You know that is how I learned about blueberry pie.

Did you learn that?

That if the juices were bubbling when they came out, that that was done?

- [Johnny] Yeah.

That's a pretty pie.

- [Sheri] Oh, that's a pretty pie.

Let's see if the other one looks- - Oh yeah, - Beautiful.

- Look at this, this one really- - Beautiful.

Now I'm thinking that this filling is probably the temperature of the surface of the sun.

- It's really hot.

So what you're gonna want to do is, we're gonna want to let these cool for at least an hour, if not longer.

I usually cool mine for a couple of hours.

- Until you really don't feel any heat at all.

- Feel no heat because as soon as it's cool, then you're able to really cut a beautiful piece of pie.

- Johnny, this is great.

I'm so excited, so excited.

- They're beautiful.

Well, thanks for- - What an easy, amazing pie.

- Super easy.

And this is probably the most fun I've ever had making a blueberry pie in this kitchen.

[giggles] - Let's do it again sometime.

All right?

- Let's do it.

- All right, thank you my friend.

- Absolutely.

Thank you.