Blackberry & Apple Pies

The delicious taste of Autumn!

Blackberry and Apple Pies

Warm weather, harvest of juicy blackberries and windfall apples. What better than to make pies for the Seniors Lunch Club? Crisp golden pastry, a slightly tart but sweet filling, and easy to pack up and portion out. Great for lunch boxes too or wrapping up in a picnic to make the most of the Autumn sunshine.

Our theme this week in the Seniors Lunch Club was “September Memories”.  We remembered Autumn pastimes – shuffling through fallen leaves, playing conkers, collecting for Harvest Festival.  We loved the smell of bonfires and the bright colours of the Autumn leaves and flowers.  The time for going back to school was remembered with surprising fondness – everyone said they’d always enjoyed the start of the new term. Seeing friends again after the summer break, writing your name in a clean new exercise book, meeting your new teachers. And looking forward to the events of the term:  Hallowe’en, Bonfire Night, planting hyacinths for the school bulbs competition, and Christmas at the end of it.

Makes 12 pies                                   Timings:  1 hour

For the pastry:

• 200g plain flour
  
• 100g salted butter
  
• 50g ground almonds
  
• 20g icing sugar
  
• 2 x medium eggs
  
• 2 dessert spoonfuls of demerara sugar

For the filling:

• 4 medium cooking apples – if they’re windfalls remove the bruised parts and you might need more apples to make up for discarding those
• 200g freshly picked blackberries
• 100g sugar

Make the filling in advance:  peel and core the cooking apples. Slice into small pieces and put in a pan with a tiny amount of water, the clean blackberries and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes until the apples are soft but not disintegrated. Taste and add a little more sugar or a squeeze of lemon juice if needed – you want this slightly tart as the pastry is sweet. Leave to cool. You can eat this just as a compote, lovely with plain yoghurt at breakfast.

Pre-heat your oven to 200°C and grease a 12-cup pie tin

Mix the flour and butter together in your mixer with the pastry paddle or rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it is like fine crumbs. Add the ground almonds and icing sugar and mix lightly. Add one egg and keep mixing slowly. Add cold water a teaspoon at a time until the pastry binds together – don’t make it too dry or it will crack when you roll it out.

Knead very quickly to bind the pastry together and then you can wrap it up and keep it in the fridge.
You don’t have to chill this, as the pies are too small to shrink much.

Beat the second egg in a bowl.

Roll out the pastry on a floured surface to 2-3mm thick and cut bottoms and tops – this makes just enough for the 12 pies. Put the bottom parts into the pie tins and brush round with beaten egg. Spoon the blackberry/apple mixture into the pies – a goodly mound of filling is required as it doesn’t rise; put on the tops and press round with a fork to seal. Brush the tops with beaten egg and sprinkle a little bit of demerara sugar on top to give a crunch. Using a knife cut a little slit in each pie top for steam to escape.

Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until crisp and golden.  Cool on a wire rack and keep in an airtight tin for 3-4 days.

Serve with a dusting of icing sugar and a swirl of whipped cream. Enjoy the taste of Autumn.