Apple & blackberry pie – everyone's favourite fruit pie

My recent mother’s day feast included one of my favourite pies: Blackberry & Apple, made in an old-fashioned enamelled pie plate. These pie plates are worth having. If you haven’t been lucky enough to inherit a set from your mum or ganny, you’ll find new versions for sale at kitchen retail stores, or online. The pie plates are very good conductors of heat, which is what you want for pastry-bottomed pies – as soon as they get hot, which is almost immediately they are exposed to heat, they transfer the heat to the pastry, and get it cooking. The opposite happens in a china ‘quiche’ dish because china is a poor conductor of heat. It takes much longer to heat up, by which time pastry on the bottom of a pie or quiche may have softened, lost its shape and become soggy from moist ingredients in the filling. China quiche dishes may look the part but they are best used as serving dishes or for food that doesn’t have a pastry bottom. China quiche dishes for quiche? I don’t think so! It just shows how we can get sucked in by marketing. Read all the tips for making Rich Shortcrust Pastry

Crimping the pastry edge is easy when the pastry is firm but pliable.

Making pastry in a food processor certainly saves time, and avoids flour under the fingernails which freaks out some people! Personally, I think there are bigger things to worry about. But, if that is your pet peeve and you don’t have a food processor, get yourself a pastry blender, a nifty little gadget that helps cut the butter through the flour. It works perfectly. Read abut it here Pastry blender