You can't go past a great Mulberry Pie

This is my first attempt at mulberry pies. I’m one of those people who is a touch shy about baking fruit pies. Yes, it 'leaked' a bit but it sure was yummy and my family want me to repeat it again and again. I have been advise by rellies to bake it a little longer.

Our Mulberry tree is groaning with fruit already. It was calling out “Help me, relieve me of all this burden. Make a pie out of me, please.”

So when I thought I could no longer ignore the tree's pleading, the second sign came to me in that I found two forgotten pie pans that had long been regulated to the wilds of the back of my deep cupboards, where they sat there, ignored.

I also have a hubby who just loves his desserts. I will have to tell you the story one day about how we met, yep, desserts are a BIG part of the story. Anyway back to this story, this year I decided to relieve the tree of her bounty by having a shot at baking a pie. This recipe has been inspired and adapted from the Inspired Taste blog. 

Mulberry Pie Recipe

Ingredients

2 (or 3 for a deep dish) Ready Made Short Crust pastry sheets
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup corn flour
2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
800g fresh or frozen mulberries
1 tablespoon butter

 Method 

1. Lay a sheet of the pastry on your 20cm pie dish and trim overhang. (If your pie dish is deep as was mine, then you may need half of the second sheet as well.)
2. Stir sugar, cornflour, lemon zest, allspice, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Add blueberries and gently toss to combine.
3. Refrigerate while you prepare the lattice crust.
4. When you have the strips ready then pour berry mixture into base of pie. Just before laying the strips.
5. Prepare Lattice Crust by cutting the pastry sheet into 2cm strips.
6. Lay 4-5 strips over filled pie, parallel and equally spaced from one another. Ideally you would fold back the second and fourth strips then lay another strip of dough perpendicular to them. Unfold second and fourth strips over new strip. Repeat until pie has been covered with a lattice. I took the lazy option and didn’t bother actually weaving them. It still looked good enough to eat.
7. Crimp edges by pinch together at meeting places along the rim. Brush the top of the pastry with melted butter. Sprinkle tablespoon of coarse sugar over crust. Heat oven to 210oC.
8. Bake chilled pie on hot baking sheet for 20 minutes before reducing the heat to 180oC then continue to bake for 45 -50 minutes, or until the crust is golden and juices in the filling are bubbling along nicely.
9. Ideally you would allow it to cool for 2 to 3 hours before cutting to allow filling to set. However my family & I were impatient and wanted warm pie straight away!!!The scent for the last hour was driving us crazy with anticipation.

Hints

• I found that lifting the lattice strips, they stretched rather too easily. Maybe it needed to be refrigerated again first.
• I was advised to refrigerate the whole pie for 20 minutes or freeze for 5 minutes before baking.
• Also as mentioned in the beginning of the post it needed to be cooked longer. I have adjusted the recipe above with an extended cooking time. Just watch for when the pastry looks golden brown and ‘cooked’.
• I strongly advise that you use at least some baking paper or a spare cookie sheet on the bottom of the oven to catch any drips from the pie while baking. It saves a lot of cleaning!
• You can substitute with frozen berries of your choice, even mix them up. Just drain them which was my mistake.
• To see how to crimp edges of pie watch this Flaky Pie Crust Video

You can see how runny it is let alone the ice cream melting on the top. Yummo!

Find the original Blueberry Pie recipe here.

Bake a cake or 10 for the fete

Cakes and other baked goodies have always been a reliable fund raiser. One can spend a lot of time making all sorts of cakes whether it be for a school fair or the village market cake stall?

This tried and recommended cake recipe base is very easy to make and will have you whipping up 10 small bar cakes in no time that will make your cake stall a sweet success and have people queuing to buy. Oh and don't let the excuse that you don't have 10 loaf pans with which to cook. I just use 2 packets of disposable foil containers that you can buy very cheaply just about everywhere. You could even sell the cakes in the containers if you like.

 

Having just the one base mix certainly makes it quick and easy to make 10 cakes within 60 minutes. So allowing for cooling down time, icing the cakes and wrapping, you can have 10 cakes ready for the stall within 2 hours. Keep a sink full of hot water and you can just about have the kitchen clean and tidy within that time too!!!

I also have a couple of variations. This time, I divided the mixture into 2 sections and thus made 2 flavours: basic vanilla cakes and and delicious apple cakes.

FETE SPECIAL RECIPE

240g margarine
4 cups sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla essence
4 eggs
1 dessert spoon bi-carbonate of soda
4 cups of hot tap water
6 cups Self Raising Flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoon milk powder
*Leave as is or add any of these variations if desired such as
          2 tablespoon of quality instant coffee or
          2 tablespoon cocoa or
          800g tinned apples plus 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350F)
Spray or grease foil containers.
In a large bowl, cream the margarine and sugar.
Add vanilla and eggs, mix gently.
Add flour, milk powder and salt. Add the hot water gradually as needed when adding the dry ingredients.
Beat together thoroughly until you have a pale, thin creamy mixture, approx 5 minutes.
Pour into greased foil containers and allow to stand for 5 minutes before baking.
Bake for 25 minutes. (The apple version needs a longer cooking time - 40 minutes and it wont rise much at all, which is why I should have cooked just 5 of these not the 7 as per the photo!!!)

I am able to cook 9 containers easily at once without over crowding - 3 on each shelf (I usually fit in the 10th one).
As it went on this day, I cooked 5 of the plain vanilla first as I wanted to ice them, so that they can start to cool whilst the second batch is cooking. Also the apple cakes take much longer to cook, which makes it a good idea to cook them separately.

I still added the whole tin of apples into the remaining cake mix. I did try reserving 2 slices of apples each per cake but they 'fell' into the mix during baking.

What is your favourite cake stall or fete item to bake?

LIM Card challenge: Use a Rubber Stamp

It has been a few weeks since I participated in a Less is more card challenge.

This is my entry for

Week 135:  Use A Rubber Stamp

Not so sure if it fits as being simple enough with the cut borders, but I did use a rubber stamp though.

I am not even sure what stamp it is anymore as I had un-mounted all my stamps to compact the storage before considering that others might want to know the name or company details. Sorry peeps, I am thinking it is an old PSX stamp, but feel free to correct me in the comments below. 

Upon further thinking, I am even wondering if it should be a Penny Black stamp on my card to meet the challenge... OK I will go back to my stamp desk and see what else I can come up with but the weather is too nice right now.... the garden is calling me and then I have promised myself to make a loganberry pie tonight!!! Then tomorrow is when I do some volunteer work. And tomorrow night is no good either as we have an 'adopted' son that comes for dinner most Tuesday nights...

Umm... let's try for Wednesday! 

Ooh. I have a grand daughter's birthday this month and want to make her a dress or something. 

So don't hold your breath for a card...there's too much life for living.
We will just have to wait and see what I end up doing.