Apple Pie with Blueberries

Apple pie with blueberries is the ultimate, perfect autumn dessert. This recipe requires just a tiny amount of sugar and incorporates the best seasonal fruits with an incredible citrusy zingy flavour.

If you haven’t baked an apple pie, can you even say that autumn was here? It’s that one dessert that brings pretty much everyone back to their childhood. That one dessert which simply means autumn. That one dessert has a million variations, but all of them are equally, incredibly tasty. Basically, it’s the dessert to end all desserts. Period.

Going down memory lane, autumn was always the most hectic time for my family. We were a family of four and my dad always had a need to grow as many possible foods as he could… and I mean ALL of them. In our garden, we had six apple trees (let me rewind… a family of four, but yes, that’s right – six apple trees!). I think at one point we might have had even more.

But I digress…

You can just imagine the amount of apples we’d harvest. My Mum and I would make apple jams, bake them with sugar, add them into pancakes, serve them next to roast chicken, make a salad or bake cakes… loads of cakes. Any type of cake. At one point I couldn’t look, eat or think about this round autumn goodness.

However, I need to admit, this period really taught me not to waste food and showed me that one simple product can be used in so many ways.

Today, those childhood lessons have come together in this amazing apple pie recipe. I had a box of blueberries in the fridge which was almost out of date and one old orange that screamed out to be used. All these products settle in cosily as part of this ultimate autumnal dessert.

So get your jumpers, woolly socks and hot drinks ready, and let’s get baking…

Apple Pie Recipe

Pastry:
350g plain flour
180g cold butter
50g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 lime (juice and zest)
Pinch of salt

Filling:
5 apples
200g blueberries
1 orange (juice and zest)
50g butter
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4teaspoons of nutmeg
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons of cornflour

Finish:
1 egg
1 teaspoon of brown sugar

1. Prepare the pastry: mix all the pastry ingredients together. Rub the flour and the butter between your fingertips until the butter is completely incorporated and all the ingredients come together (don’t overmix it). Make two dough balls – one using 1/3 of the pastry and the other with 2/3 of the dough. Wrap them in cling film and leave them in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.
2. Prepare the filling: peel the apples and cut them into small chunks. Preheat a saucepan with a knob of butter. Add the apples, juice and zest of one orange, cinnamon, nutmeg and honey. Stir the filling from time-to-time until the apples start breaking, get soft and juicy. Finish it by adding cornflour and blueberries, heat the mix for 1 minute and then let it cool.             
3. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Take the pastry out of the fridge. Lightly dust your work surface with some plain flour. Roll out the bigger pastry ball to a circle of 5mm thickness. Put the rolled-out pastry into a pie case. Using your fingers, gently press the dough into the corners of the case.
4. Add the filling.
5. Lightly dust your work surface with some plain flour. Roll out the smaller pastry ball to a circle of 5mm thickness. Cut the pastry into 1 cm lines and create a lattice pie crust (if you’re unsure, here’s a tutorial on how to do it).
6. Brush the pastry with egg wash and sprinkle some brown sugar on top.
7. Bake the pie for 40 minutes until it gets golden. Serve it with homemade custard or a scoop of ice cream.