RECIPE: Elizabeth's Blackberry and Apple Pie (Chapter 9)
Finally... the promised pie recipe.
In New Zealand we love pies.
Everyone should be happy with this recipe - a fruit pie for dessert (because not everyone likes meat pies as much as we do in NZ).
Using an enamel pie dish (see picture from previous blog post) will make a better pie with crispier pastry. It's what Elizabeth would have done!
Ingredients:
PASTRY
2 cups plain flour
pinch salt
125g butter
water
FILLING:
3 Granny Smith apples stewed
fresh blackberries
sugar
Method: If you have some, use store-bought short pastry and skip making it! Or else, make the pastry:
Put flour and salt in a bowl.
Cut butter into small cubes and add to flour bowl (see picture below).
Rub the butter between your fingers, so that the cubes are broken up and become covered in flour. Stop when the mixture looks like 'breadcrumbs' - which means the butter is mixed thoroughly with the flour (see picture below).
Mix in a little water to make a stiff dough.
Roll out the pastry until it's flat and about 1-2cm thick. (If it is too warm it won't roll out properly - so put the pastry in the fridge to cool down, if this happens.) Cut pastry in half.
Put a square of pastry in an enamel or metal pie dish to make the bottom. Cut off any excess around the edge.
Stew your apples (if you haven't already) - this means cutting them up and cooking them with a little water and sugar (no more than half a cup) until they go soft.
Put the stewed apple and blackberries into the pie.
Put the second piece of pastry on top to make a lid. Stab a few holes on top to let the steam out and cut off any excess pastry.
Bake for 20 mins at 180-200 C, or "until the pastry is golden brown," as they say!
Picture by: Jamie, Flikr. "Vintage Ad #1,083 Mother sure does make good pie!" Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
Photos by: Kellen, Wikimedia Comons. "08-crust butter." Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - httpscommons.wikimedia.orgwikiFile08-crust_butter.jpg#mediaFile08-crust_butter.jpg "09-crust butter." Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - httpscommons.wikimedia.orgwikiFile09-crust_butter.jpg#mediaFile00-crust_butter.jpg
