Blackberry Pie

It's pie season again and I'm so excited to be bringing you all some more delicious sweet pie recipes this fall! This blackberry pie is oh so delicious and fairly tangy, so it's perfect with some sweetened vegan whipped cream on top to balance out the flavours. Like most of my pie recipes this is a long one, but it is soo worth it once you have your freshly baked pie in front of you, trust me.

Crust:

600g all purpose flour

300g dairy free unsalted butter*

170g white granulated sugar

1.25 tsp fine table salt (reduce to 0.75tsp if using salted butter)

Approx 90-95g cold water

*I recommend using a block butter that stays fairly solid in room temperature

Filling:

1,2kg frozen blackberries (880g once thawed and drained)

30g lemon juice

90g white granulated sugar

60g corn starch

"Egg wash"

1.5tbsp melted vegan butter

1.5tbsp maple syrup

2-3tsp granulated sugar

Method:

Start by leaving the blackberries on the countertop to thaw as you make the dough.

To make the dough; add the flour, sugar and salt to a bowl and give it a good whisk. Add chunks of dairy free butter and either pinch them with your fingers or use a pastry cutter to slice it into small chunks through the flour. The chunks should be about pea sized and evenly distributed throughout the dry mixture. Then, gradually add your ice cold water while carefully kneading/stirring until it begins to come together. You may need to adjust the amount of water slightly, but you'll know it's done once it comes together as one shaggy dough that you can carefully knead into two equal sized discs. Do not kneed too much as you want to keep the chunks of butter intact. This will give you that flaky pie crust we're looking for!

Wrap each piece in cling film and chill for at least 1 hour in the fridge. Once rested roll out one half of the chilled pie dough into a disc somewhere between 0.75-1cm thick - using lots of flour to prevent it from sticking. Transfer it to a pie tin that's about 27.5cm in diameter. You can use a smaller pie tin too but you'll just have a bit more excess dough and filling. Trim away some of the excess dough around the edges (you want a few cm overhang on every side) and fold the rest on top of the edge of the tin. Crimp your crust as you like. Place back in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.

Then, poke the crust slightly with a fork, add a sheet of parchment paper into the tin, then some tin foil and pie weights (dried beans or peas will work too) into the crust to prevent it from puffing up in the oven. Blind bake the crust at 200C for 20 minutes. Once it's done baking, remove the pie weights/dried beans and leave the crust to cool on the countertop as you make the filling.

Then grab the now thawed blackberries and drain off the excess liquid. The total weight after draining should come to about 880g. Add the berries to a bowl along with some lemon juice, corn starch and sugar. Mix gently until everything is combined, but try to keep the berries intact. Pour the filling into the pre-baked and cooled crust. At this point you want to preheat your oven back up to 200C.

Roll out the second half of dough into roughly the same diameter as the first. Slice the dough into strips about 3cm thick and layer them in a lattice pattern on top of the pie. You can do this by first placing the strips vertically across the pie and then folding up every second strip to place down a horizontal one. Then fold the strips back down and fold up the vertical strips that were down before to place down the next horizontal strip of dough. Continue this process until all the horizontal dough strips are placed and you should have a lattice.

Once you've added the lattice top, mix maple syrup and butter and brush all over the crust and lattice topping. Sprinkle on a few spoonfuls of granulated sugar. Tent the crust by making a ring of tin foil that fits outside of the pie tin, folding it over on top so it just covers the crust without touching it. This will prevent the edges from browning faster than the rest of the pie and becoming burnt/overcooked. For tips on how to do this check out the Preppy Kitchens apple pie video here.

Bake the pie on a wire rack in the middle of the oven at 175C for 40 minutes, then turn the oven up to 200C and bake for another 20 minutes or until golden. Feel free to remove the tin foil for the last 5-10 minutes to ensure an even golden colour on the pie. Remove from the oven and let it cool down before slicing into it. I let mine set in the fridge overnight, this will make slicing it into even slices easier, but at least let it come down to room temperature before serving. Serve the pie with some vegan whipped cream and chopped chocolate and enjoy!