Brr, the chill has descended here in Sydney. Pie baking weather, heat the house by turning on the oven for an hour. Win/win!
Rustic Apple, rhubarb and strawberry pie
Auth: Lorena
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Rustic
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 8
An easy pastry recipe that can be adapted for savoury tarts and pies. It has a lovely soft crumb, like fine shortbread. I make it in the food processor but you can rub in the cold butter with your fingers quickly.
Ingredients
- PASTRY
- 200 grams plain flour
- 125 grams unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons icing sugar mixture
- 1 egg yolk
- 2-3 tablespoons cold water
- FILLING
- 3 medium size apples, peeled, cored and sliced
- ½ lemon, juice and zest
- 1 bunch rhubarb, washed, trimmed and cut into 5cm lengths
- ½ punnet strawberries, rinsed, hulled and cut in half
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- ½ cup regular sugar
- 1 teaspoon plain flour
- ⅓ cup slivered almonds (optional)
- ⅓ cup caster sugar for sprinkling
- icing sugar to garnish
- cream, custard or ice cream to serve
Instructions
- To make the pastry:
- Place flour, icing sugar and butter into the bowl of a food processor.
- Pulse until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Add the egg yolk and a couple of tablespoons of water.
- Pulse quickly and then turn out onto a lightly floured bench.
- Press the mixture into a ball, it should form a firm dough and stick together. If not, you may need a little more water, not more than a tablespoon at a time or it can get sticky and unmanageable.
- Press dough into a flat disc, wrap and refrigerate whilst you prepare your filling.
- The recipe work best if you can chill this for ½ hour or more so I often make this ahead of time.
- Apple, rhubarb and strawberry filling:
- Place rhubarb, apple slices,lemon juice and zest into a saucepan. Cook gently for 5 minutes.
- Add ½ cup sugar and vanilla and heat till sugar dissolves.
- Set aside to cool.
- Roll out your pastry:
- Using a rolling pin, roll out the pastry into a loose circle till it's about 35cm across.
- Butter a 20cm glass or metal pie dish and drape pastry into the dish, letting the excess pastry hang over the edges. Place it on to a metal oven tray and chill for 15 minutes to allow the pastry to relax again. (It is stressful work being rolled flat you know!)
- Heat the oven to 190C whilst you assemble the pie.
- Fill the pie crust with the cooked apple and rubharb mix, sprinkle with teaspoon of plain flour.
- Place cut strawberries on top.
- Sprinkle with slivered almonds.
- Bring edges of pastry up and over the pie in soft folds.
- Sprinkle the top of the pie with the extra caster sugar.
- Place pie with the oven tray underneath in the oven (to catch any drips) and bake for 20 minutes when it should be golden. Cover the top of the pie loosely with foil to prevent scorching and to cook the bottom evenly. Cook a further 20 minutes and remove the foil, if the pie needs a little more cooking and browning leave it in there a little longer. My pies took an hour to cook nicely, could be the size of my oven or the position of the rack, every oven is different!
- Serve warm, dusted with a little icing sugar and some cream, ice cream or custard for the ultimate indulgence. Enjoy!
