Baking With Apples: Blackberry and Apple Pie

Okay, firstly, let's just pretend that I didn't miss last week's blog post and that my life is generally organised. Luckily this week I had this post prepared before Sunday in which I thought I'd share a recipe with you which involves apples since it's coming to that time of the year where they're in season and people with apple trees are overloaded with mountains of the fruit.

Ever since I was little, it's been a tradition to go blackberry picking around late August to early September and with our finds we'd always bake a yummy blackberry and apple pie which I'd always be excited to enjoy with some custard after my dinner. 

The first thing that you obviously need to do is get yourself some blackberries and apples. For me this involved venturing out into the garden and hand picking them.

Once I had my blackberries and apples, I began preparing the blackberries by sprinkling salt over them and submerging them in cold water for a while to get rid of any bugs or dirt. 

I then moved onto preparing the apples whilst the blackberries chilled in their bath of salt water. Never underestimate the time it takes to peel and chop up apples, this whole bag took me a good half an hour! To stop the apples from going brown whilst I carried on preparing the endless apples, I put the apple quarters directly into a saucepan of cold water which I later put on the stove for about twenty minutes on a low heat to soften them. If you want to soften the apples quicker, try covering the saucepan with a lid to keep in the heat.

Before moving onto the shortcrust pastry, I greased a round flan tin with butter.

Not because I'm lazy, but because my mum wanted me to use them up, I used shortcrust pastry mixes. I don't personally like using them because I prefer making it from scratch, however I used them anyway and followed the instructions on the back. Once I had combined mixture I knead it into a ball, placed it on a floured surface and rolled it out into a circular shape big enough to cover the bottom of the tin. 

After placing the pastry in the tin I added the apples and blackberries, sprinkled them with sugar and rolled out another circular shape of pastry and placed it over the top as a lid for the pie.

I've always liked to use the back of a fork to seal the edge of the pie which you can see in the picture below and then cut off the leftovers with a sharp knife. To let air in and out of the pie in the oven I made a cross in the middle, and because it looked a bit plain, I made three leaves and added them to the pie. To finish off the pie I pasted some milk over the pastry and sprinkled some sugar over it to make it a little sweeter. 

I then popped the pie in a preheated oven on Gas Mark 6 for about half an hour until it was slightly golden.

I hope you enjoyed this post and be sure to stick around for next week's! (hopefully it will be another baking one) :) 

Becky x