Nectarine and blackberry pie

Nectarine and blackberry pie

Serves 8–10
Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 40 mins

I feel very lucky to be able to share this recipe here. It comes via my friend Amber, whose husband Derek took the mantle of making it for every family gathering soon after joining her family. The original version of this recipe appears in my book In Good Company as an apple pie but this version has a filling of nectarines and blackberries.

6-8 nectarines
1 cup blackberries
2 tsp cornflour
1/3 cup caster (superfine) sugar
The juice of one lemon
A pinch of ground cinnamon

Pastry
1 cup (250 g) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup (110 g) caster (superfine) sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 large egg, plus 1 egg white for brushing
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Have a large spring-form tin ready – mine is 24 cm. Place a baking tray in the oven to heat up.

Slice the nectarines and place in a bowl with the blackberries, cornflour, lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon. Toss gently with your hands then set aside for the fruit to mascerate and the cornflour to help thicken the ‘sauce’ up a little.

For the pastry, put the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat again until the mixture has doubled in volume, at least 6 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well combined. 

Reduce the speed of your mixer and begin adding the flour, a little at a time until all the flour has been added and you have a nice cake-like batter.

Reserve about a third of the pastry and place the rest in the tin. Gently press with your fingers to push the pastry out to cover the base and about 3 cm (11/4 inches) up the side, as evenly as possible. Don’t worry if it looks a bit lumpy – this pastry has the raising power of that self-raising flour so it will puff and swell a bit as it cooks. Tip the fruit mixture into the pie ‘shell’.

Take a golf-ball-sized piece of the reserved pastry and use your hands to flatten it into a disc. Place the disc on top of the apples, then repeat with the remaining pastry, covering as much of the apple as possible. Don’t worry if you don’t cover the whole top of your pie, the pastry will puff and expand as it cooks, so should form itself into a fairly cohesive pie topping in the oven and if there are a few gaps here and there that’s totally fine too!

Whisk the egg together and brush it over the top of the pie, then sprinkle with the extra sugar. Take the hot tray out of the oven and place your pie tin on top then pop back in the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until the pie is golden. Watch carefully towards the end of the cooking time – you might need to reduce the heat to 180°C (350°F) if the pastry is cooking too quickly.

The pie should be golden and a thing of beauty when you take it out of the oven. But please don’t attempt to cut it straight away or everything will collapse into a crumbly (albeit delicious) mess. Leave it to cool and firm up in the tin, then cut it once it’s at room temperature or even from the fridge. Reheat the pie if you like, but I love it best cold.