Quick Bites - Blueberry-Mascarpone Turnovers

Happy National Pie Day! It's only fitting that the American Pie Council should choose such a blustery and dreary winter day to celebrate the most heartwarming (and delicious!) treats.

In honor of this most tastiest of holidays, I'm proud to introduce a new feature on Pies Etc.  - a section called Quick Bites, where I'll showcase recipes that can be made in under half an hour and with ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen.

Enjoy!

Ingredients - (yield - about 8 turnovers)
- 4 oz. soft sweet cheese (I suggest and used Mascarpone, cream cheese works as a great substitute as does any kind of Brie-type cheese you might have left over from your last Girl's Night Wine and Cheese Party)
- 1/2 cup fruit, chopped into very small pieces (I used blueberries, any soft sweet fruit will work)
- 1 tbsp honey 
- 1/4 tsp corn starch
- 1 tbsp sugar
- Lemon juice and zest from 1/4 lemon
- Pie crust
  *I had a small ball of pie crust left over from my last baking experiment, it was about 5 inches in diameter and enough to make eight 3"x 3". squares of dough; the above measurements reflect the amount of dough I had

I'd like to say I hand picked these from my garden. I didn't. I live in New York City and bought these frozen from the C-Town down the street.

How to
In a small saucepan, melt the cheese, cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice and zest until creamy. Let cool.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out your dough and cut as many 3"x 3" squares as you can.

Squeeze a dollop of honey onto each square.

Add a small dollop of the cheese mixture over the honey. Not too much though! In this case, a little goes a long way.

Add a few berries in the center of the dough square.

Finally, fold the dough in half (to make a triangle) and seal the edges. It helps if you dip a finger in water and run it along the edges of the dough, this will seal the edges so the turnovers don't pop open in the oven.



Don't seal your edges this way:

Photo courtesy of ALAMY

Or this way:

Photo courtesy of this odd website

Seal your edges this way:

Use a fork to pinch the edges

Finally, sprinkle the turnovers with a little sugar and bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until they are golden brown (or until you realize that you didn't seal the edges well enough and now there's blueberry juice all over your oven).

Blueberry and Mascarpone Turnover