Nov 183 min read

Claudette Colbert's Fresh Blueberry Pie

Claudette is going to get us ready for the holidays!

Claudette Colbert was born in France and her family moved to American when she was about three years old. She began her career on Broadway before making the leap to film in the late 1920s. In the 1930s she was hailed for her work in screwball comedies including the 1934 classic It Happened One Night, which made history as the first film to sweep the Academy Awards in all of the top categories including Best Actress for Colbert and Best Actor for co-star Clark Gable. Throughout her career, she worked for many of Hollywood's top directors including John Ford, Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, Cecil B. De Mille and Preston Sturges. During WWII she adapted to changing audience tastes and embodied several strong characters struggling to survive the conflict in films such as So Proudly We Hail!, Since You Went Away and Three Came Home. She made her final film in 1961 and returned to the theatre. Colbert retired in the Barbados and lived to be 92 years old.

Recipe

Samantha made Claudette's Cheese and Olive Puffs, which was published in "The Sinatra Celebrity Cookbook: Barbara, Frank & Friends" by Frank and Barbara Sinatra.

Ingredients

2 cups (8 ounces) shredded sharp Cheddar cheese, softened

1/3 cup butter, softened

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon Tabasco

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

2 (10 ounce) bottles pimento-stuffed green olives, drained and blotted dry

Directions

Using food processor, blend Cheddar cheese and butter together until smooth. Add flour, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce.

Wrap each olive with small amount of pastry, completely covering and shaping into balls. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Freeze, then transfer to plastic bag and store in freezer until ready to use.

Place on baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for about 12 minutes or until crust is golden. Serve puffs hot. Makes 36 to 48.

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The second recipe is from the book "Famous Stars Favorite Foods", which was published in 1938 and edited by Fannie Sniff.

Ingredients

Pastry:

2 cups pastry flour

2/3 cup shortening

1/2 teaspoon salt

Ice cold water

Pie filling:

2/3 cups of sugar

2 cups fresh blueberries

1 teaspoon of Arrowroot flour

1 teaspoon butter

pinch of salt

Directions

Pastry:

Sift flour and salt three times, add half the amount of shortening, rub lightly with fingers--but not too much. Add ice water very slowly and just to form the pastry clean from the bowl. Roll on lightly floured board just once, spread with one-third of the remaining shortening. Fold three corners into center and repeat three times, each time using equal parts of the shortening. This makes the most delicious pastry, and can be kept for several days in the refrigerator if rolled in wax paper and small tea-towel.

Pie filling:

Flour pan plate with sifted flour. Line with crust. Brush well with egg white. Fill heaping with fresh berries, sprinkle with that sifted flour and sugar and salt, and mix well with the berries. Spot over with dots of butter and top with crust or with strips of pastry, criss-cross. If a glazed top is desired, brush top a few minutes before finished baking with a boiling sugar syrup in which a teaspoon of butter has been just before brushing.

Special Guests

Simone O. Elias loves teaching young people about old Hollywood, so she wrote a book called “Old Films, Young Eyes: A Teenage Take on Hollywood's Golden Age”. It comes out December 1, 2024 from McFarland. She also co-hosts the podcast Teenage Golden Age about golden age movies from the teen perspective.

Samantha Ellis writes the column "Cooking with the Stars" for the Classic Movie Hub. She blogs at Musings of a Classic Film Addict and co-hosts the podcast "Ticklish Business".

Video

Final Result

Samantha has made these Cheese and Olives Puffs many times and says they are very easy to make and work as a perfect party appetizer.

I made a huge mess trying to make the pie crust from scratch and ultimately I gave up and resorted to the pre-made pie crust I had purchased as a back up. I ran out of eggs, but I used butter to brush the bottom of the pie and I also cut back on the sugar. I did a lattice top on my pie and Simone chose to do more of a blueberry crumble.

Even with my tweaks, it still turned out really well. The recipe didn't have a cook time or temperature, but I put this at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes. The pie turned out really well and was delicious.