Vegan MoFo day 10 - Shortbread pies are something blue

Something blue? Something blue? What sort of MoFo prompt is that?

There just aren't that many blue foods that occur in nature, really, are there? Blue potatoes, I guess, and blue corn. Only you try finding blue corn flour in the UK. You can't. Unless you want to spend £20 importing it, which, I'll be honest, I did consider at one low point staring down the barrel of this particularly difficult MoFo challenge.

Anyway, like any sane person, when facing an insurmountable obstacle, I prefer to cheat than work my way to a solution. So today, you'll be getting a blueberry recipe. Sure, they're not actually blue, are they? Only they're called blueberries, not purpleberries, which would be a more accurate description, so due to the blueness in their name, I'm counting them towards today's challenge.

Oh, and for extra blueness, there's some blue icing as well. (Sainsbury's piping icing is vegan, in case you want to create this recipe with a more steady hand than mine, though you may wish to hold off your judgment until you've seen what mischief I've wrought).

Anyway, blueberries. What can you do with blueberries? Turn them into tiny pies with shortbread crusts? Well, yes, that. You can do that, and that is what I've done. The idea is a shameless rip off from here, a blog called Comfortably Domestic, that I stumbled on when trying to refine my blueberry shortbread ideas. Being neither comfortable nor domestic, may I recommend using the original recipe rather than my own, should you wish to make said blueberry shortbread pies.

Let's plough on. Here's what you do: make shortbread, put it in some cupcake cases with blueberries, bake, then deface with icing.

That's the short version, here's the long one:

Tiny blueberry shortbread pies

Ingredients
125g self-raising flour
50g rice flour
50g icing sugar
Pinch of salt
100g vegan margarine or similar

How you do it 
Heat your oven to 160C (fan) or 180C (normal).
Mix all the dry ingredients together (everything except the margarine) and stir til combined.
Then add the margarine, squashing it through your hands into the mix, then pressing the mix together until it becomes one big ball of dough.
Put the dough ball in the fridge for half an hour.
Flour a board and roll out to a thickness of half a centimetre or a little thinner if you can manage it.
Using a cup or similar sized biscuit cutter, cut out rounds of dough and press them into cupcake cases or muffin tins (greased in the latter case).
Repeat until your shortbread mixture is used up. If the dough starts to stick or rip apart, put it in the fridge for 10 minutes until it's workable again.
Place between six and eight blueberries in each dough divot.
Put the shortbread in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until just touched with brown.
Once cooled, cover with icing, in the manner of a drunk child.