I have made this pie a couple of times this summer and it is really tasty with the occasional ping of ginger. It is especially good when made with the blackberries from Westerway Raspberry Farm in southern Tasmania.

The recipe is taken from The Pie project by Phoebe Wood and Kirsten Jenkins.

Ingredients for pastry

• 125 g cold unsalted butter, cut into 2 cm cubes
• 55 g castor sugar
• 200 g plain flour
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar mixed with 80 ml ice cold water
• ¼ tsp fine sea salt

Ingredients for filling

• 500 g frozen or fresh blackberries
• ½ cup caster sugar
• ½ cup raspberry or cherry jam
• 25 g crystallised ginger chopped finely
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tbls of water
• 1 tbls demerara sugar

1. For the pastry, combine flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the butter and toss to coat. Turn out onto a clean work bench and using a pastry cutter, roughly cut butter into flour. Create a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add water/vinegar mixture in 3 lots, working it in with your hands to form a rough dough (you may not need all the water). Shape into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 3 hours.
2. Cook blackberries, caster sugar, jam and ginger in a saucepan over medium heat for 15 minutes or until syrupy. Stir ¼ cup syrup with the cornflour until smooth and then return the cornflour mixture to the saucepan and cook for 4 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat and set aside until completely cool.
3. If you want the lattice top on the pie, roll out a third of the pastry on a lightly floured flat surface to form a 22 cm x 15 cm rectangle and cut into strips lengthwise. Place strips on a tray covered with baking paper and chill for 30 minutes. Roll out the remainder of the pastry and line a 20 cm x 3 cm deep pie dish or tart tin. Chill this pastry for 30 minutes as well.
4. Preheat oven to 200°C (less for a fan forced oven).
5. Pour the blackberry mixture into the pastry lined tin. Make a loose lattice top with the chilled strips and place it over the filling. Press the edges together to seal and trim any excess pastry.
6. Brush the pastry with egg wash and scatter with the demerara sugar
7. Place on a baking tray and bake for 30 minutes or until light golden. Reduce heat by 20°C and cook for a further 30 minutes or until golden.
8. Rest for 30 minutes then serve with cream or ice-cream.

Tips

• I used metric cup and spoon measurements; 1 cup = 250 ml, 1 tbls = 20 ml
• I think it is best to make the pastry and the blackberry filling the day before you want to make the pie.
• The original recipe says to use frozen berries, but I used fresh berries because they were in season and it still worked well.
• The ginger is quite subtle so if you like ginger, you could add a little more.
• I made the pastry in a food processor and it may not have been as flakey as if I had cut the butter in, but it still worked well. I also only used about 2/3 of the water/apple cider mixture.
• The first time I made this recipe I accidently used a 1/3 cup instead ½ cup for the sugar and raspberry jam, but decided it was sweet enough with these slightly smaller quantities, so have continued to use them. I also found that I had to use 3-4 tsp cornflour rather than 2, but this may be due to using Australian ingredients in an English recipe.
• The original recipe says to use a 17 cm pie dish, but I found there was too much blackberry mixture for this size dish, hence the 20 cm dish suggested
• The original recipe says to freeze the pie for 1 hour once it has been put together. I didn’t do this and put the pie in the fridge for about 20 minutes before baking and baked for about for about 40 minutes at 180°C in a fan forced oven.