Apple and Blackberry pie (Sweet Pastry)

I have a blackberry hedge growing along my fence line and during the season pick them regularly, using some fresh but freezing a lot of them, Frozen blackberry’s need to be cooked from frozen, if you defrost them first they just go mushy and very wet. I also have apple trees but they are rather small and I’ve long used up the fruit I got from them so had to buy but I’m buying more trees, different fruits next year as I continue to build my orchard.
For the sweet pastry. (I doubled up this recipe as this pastry and the pie freeze well)

- 165g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 25g ground almonds
- 120g chilled butter.
- 55g caster sugar
- 1 medium egg

And for the filling
Blackberry’s (fresh or frozen), apples and soft brown sugar.

For this recipe I used a machine but you can do this easily by hand, if using a machine its very important not to over work the pastry, don’t rely on the timer, when you have pastry stop the machine.

Put the flour and almonds in the bowl and combine.

Slice the butter into the bowl and mix together

Then pour in the sugar and mix.

Add the egg, as soon as it’s all combined turn off the machine, I set my machine to four minutes, I turned it off at three minutes.

Roll the pastry in flour, put in a bag and place in the fridge for 3 hours.

Cut the apples into wedges (peeling is an option, I don’t) and put them in a frying pan along with the blackberry’s, sprinkle with sugar and cook till the apples are soft but not mushy. Strain (but save the syrup) and leave to cool, the reason I strain the fruit after cooking is so that I can cook the sauce a little longer if I need to make a thicker syrup and also control how much syrup goes in the pie.