Blackberry pie

Serves:

Ingredients

For the pastry

• 250g plain flour
• 85g icing sugar
• 125g cold butter, cubed
• 1 egg

For the filling

• 1 1/2 cups blackberries (or any other berries you have on hand)
• 1 tbsp caster sugar (our berries were very sweet but you may like to add more sugar if buying commercially grown blackberries, which can sometimes be a touch sour)
• juice of one lemon

Method

Combine flour and sugar in a food processor then add the cold butter and blitz just until mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the egg and process again for about 10 seconds.

Tip the mixture onto a lightly floured work bench and using the heel of your hands bring together into a smooth dough. Shape this into a nice fat disc, wrap in cling film and pop in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile pick through the blackberries to remove any stalks. Place in a medium-sized bowl and sprinkle over the caster sugar and lemon juice. Gently stir this through and leave to sit while the pastry chills out.

When ready to roll out the pastry, preheat the oven to 200°C, grab a pie dish or even a shallow oven-proof bowl (something with a 20cm base or thereabouts is perfect) and a rolling pin. Lightly flour your work surface and roll the pastry out till about 5mm thickness. Gently drape this into the pie dish and trim the edges leaving about 1cm hanging over the sides. Gather the remaining pastry and form into a ball again. If you have time, pop this back in the fridge for another 15 minutes or so (and the lined pie dish too).

Fill the pastry base with the cooled blackberry mixture.

Roll the remaining pastry out, again to about 5mm thickness and cut into long strips, ideally you’d like to have about eight of these to work with. Lay four across the pie and then weave the other four through these to create a lattice effect.

Trim the edges of the pastry strips and fold up the pie base to seal everything together and place in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes (depending on your oven!).

Notes:

• Check after 20 minutes in the oven to be sure you don’t burn that beautiful pastry top. If it looks like the lattice-work is cooking a little too fast just cover it loosely with some tin foil.
• If making pastry isn’t at all your thing, just use ready-made shortcrust and no-one will be the wiser.
• If you can’t be bothered to make the lattice (although I promise it doesn’t take long and satisfaction value is high!), just cut out a few shapes in the pastry with cookie cutters. Some little hearts or stars dotted across the pie would look gorgeous.
• This recipe was created by Sophie Hansen for Kidspot, New Zealand's best recipe finder.  You can follow Sophie on Local is Lovely, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.

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Serving Suggestions

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