Pi Day - Blackberry and Apple Pie

Kitchen Parade is hosting a one-off event called Pi Day to honour pi, the mathematical constant approximating to 3.14. In a wonderful play on words, to participate in Pi Day, you must make a pie with a home-made crust and post about it between March 10 and March 14.

I have mentioned previously that one of my favourite food magazines is Cuisine, a Kiwi publication. While flicking through Issue No. 127 (March 2008), I spotted a lovely sounding recipe for a single crust blackberry and apple pie by Ginny Grant on p102. I am a sucker for a fruit pie, so I have chosen to make this pie for my Pi Day entry.

If a blackberry and apple pie with a cream cheese crust strikes your fancy, you will need the following ingredients:

Pastry

100g plain flour

100g cubed butter

100g cubed cream cheese

Fruit filling

1kg apples

50g butter

3 tablespoons sugar

300g blackberries

2 tablespoons brandy

2 tablespoons cornflour

milk to brush the crust

To make the pastry, blitz all the pastry ingredients together in a food processor until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs. Press the pastry into a disc and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.

While the pastry is chilling, peel, core and slice your apples into wedges. (I used my fantastic $2 shop gadget that cores and slices in one go.) Melt the butter in a large frypan, then add the apples and sugar and cook the apples until they are soft. Add the blackberries and brandy and stir lightly so as not to break up the blackberries, then finally, sprinkle the fruit mixture with the cornflour and mix through to thicken slightly.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease a deep pie plate, and spoon the fruit mixture into the pie plate. Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out until roughly 3mm thick, then place over the top of the fruit, cut off the excess pastry around the edges of the pie and prick the top in a few places with a fork so that the steam can escape during baking. Ginny recommends refrigerating the crust again for 30 minutes after rolling out, but I didn't find it necessary. (At this stage, you should also brush the crust with milk to help it brown in the oven - I forgot this part, but it ultimately didn't matter much. You can also optionally sprinkle the top of the pie crust with extra sugar to give it some extra crunch.)

Place the pie in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180 degrees Celsius and continue to bake for roughly another 30 minutes until the pie crust is golden. Allow the pie to cool to room temperature before serving.

The highlight of this pie for me was definitely the fruity filling. Cooking the fruit prior to baking gave it a marvellous depth of flavour, and the smell and colour of the cooking fruit was delightful. I was not so enamoured of the crust, and if I made this again, I would probably use a standard egg pastry, and perhaps give it a double crust.

As part of Pi Day, we have been asked to include some tips and tricks about making pastry. In general:

• Start with the amount of flour stated in the recipe when making pastry. If it is too sticky to form into a ball, add more flour; if it is too dry, add cold water tablespoon by tablespoon until the pastry is of the right consistency to work with easily.


• Refrigerating pastry wrapped in clingfilm for roughly half an hour makes it easier to roll out.
  
• I find it easier to roll out pastry on a sheet of lightly floured greaseproof paper. This stops the pastry from sticking to the bench, and makes it easier to lift once rolled out.


• If I find a particular pastry is hard to roll out without sticking to the rolling pin, I find that rolling out the pastry between two sheets of greaseproof paper is helpful.


• The greaseproof paper on which you rolled out the pastry can be used to lift the pastry into the pie dish without breaking. Draping the pastry over the rolling pin also helps with lifting it.
  
• Try and avoid making pastry on a hot or humid day, as it makes the pastry very soft and almost impossible to work with.


• If it is very difficult to line the pastry pan with a particular pastry in one piece (eg because the pastry is very soft), then you can always patch up any holes with leftover pastry and smooth over the patches with your fingers until they meld into the crust.

I find a food processor invaluable in making pastry, because it cuts out a lot of the elbow grease in rubbing butter into flour, and is much quicker. Partly for this reason, partly because it produces a great tasting pie crust that doesn't compete with the filling, and partly because it doesn't shrink much, I like to use this pastry recipe from Exclusively Food for sweet pies.

Thanks to Kitchen Parade for hosting Pi Day, and do check out the progressive roundup of pies here.