Apple and Blackberry Pie

This Apple and Blackberry Pie recipe takes a classic apple pie and adds blackberries for color and flavor. It’s the perfect fall pie for apple season as long as you remove those pesky blackberry seeds.

So read on for all the detailed tips and tricks for making a blackberry apple pie. Or just grab your blackberries and apples, hit that Jump to Recipe button, and let’s make an apple blackberry pie!

Key techniques: making pie crust

The key to the flakiest pastry is to treat it gently and to keep it cold. But there are shortcuts if you spontaneously decide you want pie for dessert tonight.

Pie crust can be made by hand, with a mixer, or with a food processor. It’s easier with the food processor, but you lose a bit of flakiness. In my opinion, some times call for convenience. Pie tonight, right?

I use a combination of cream cheese and butter in many of my pie crusts, similar to the dough used in rugelach. It’s so much easier to work with than an all-butter crust, and you get a pie crust that’s still flaky and tender and just a bit tangy.

Tips and tricks

Making the pie crust

Whatever way you make it, mix the dry ingredients together first and then cut in the cream cheese (Panel #1 below). Add the butter cubes (Panel #2), and cut in or process until the butter is the size of flattened peas.

Add the liquids and mix until your crust just starts to come together when you pinch it with your fingers. Divide the dough into two bowls or plastic bags, with the bottom crust about 360 grams (not quite half of the dough).

With each half, use your hands to gently push and fold the mixture together until it starts to hold together and forms a ball. Flatten the pie crust dough into disks and chill in the refrigerator while you make the filling.

Preparing the apples

First core, peel, and slice the apples. You can do this all with a paring knife. Or I like to core the apples first with this tool, peel the apple, slice it it half from top to bottom, and then cut quarter inch slices. There’s no right or wrong here.

As you cut each apple, toss it into a medium to large bowl with the lemon juice and sugar to prevent browning. Once you’ve sliced all of the apples, put them in a sieve over a small to medium size sauce pan to collect the juices while you prepare the blackberries.

Don’t wash the apple bowl yet!

Making the blackberry purée

The first step in preparing the blackberries for this apple pie is to remove the seeds. I made one version of this pie without doing this step, and it was delicious but crunchy!

Put all of the blackberries into your food processor or blender. Blitz and then pass through a fine mesh sieve to collect all the liquid, scraping the bottom of the sieve with a clean spatula to make sure you get all of the blackberry juice.

Add the blackberry purée to the liquid that has drained from the apples. Heat the pot on low, stirring intermittently, until the liquid thickens. Once it does, pour it over the apples (which are now back in the apple bowl with some cornstarch), toss it all, and let it cool while you roll out your pie crusts.

Got too many blackberries? Here are some of my favorites:

• Blackberry lemon bread (a quickbread)
• Blackberry swirl cheesecake brownies
• Blackberry curd tart
• Blackberry strawberry banana smoothie bowls
• Vodka sour with blackberry syrup

Rolling out the pie dough

For the bottom crust, I think this is the easiest way to transfer your dough to the pie pan:

Once you have rolled out the dough, take one side and roll it with your hands onto the rolling pin. Use a bench scraper to release it from your countertop if the dough has gotten warm and is sticking. You should be able to roll about half the crust onto the pin. Now slide your pie pan underneath the rolling pin and crust and unroll the crust from the pin.

You might have to do some adjusting to make sure it is even in the pie pan. Then fill the bottom crust with the blackberry apple filling.

Lattice top crusts can be made directly on the pie or made on a cutting board and then transferred to the pie. Loose lattices and top crusts made out of cutouts are easier to make directly on the pie.

However, if you have a messy pie filling, it’s neater to make the crust on the cutting board. If your kitchen is warm, chill the lattice crust so it’s easier to transfer.

A cutout top crust, like the one below from my strawberry apple pie, would also work, if you prefer. Or use my cheddar cheese pie crust instead!

If you’ve been gentle with your crust so far, the final pie is the point where chilling can really make a difference whether the crust shrinks or not.

Right before baking, brush the pie with the cream and sprinkle with sugar. Or you can use an egg wash to get a glossier brown like in that strawberry apple pie.

Baking the pie on the stone helps the bottom crust to cook well. And be sure to bake your pie on a sheet of foil, because this pie definitely bubbles.

After about 20 to 30 or so minutes of baking, protect your crust from over-browning. I use a piece of aluminum foil with a small hole ripped out of the center. I have used purchased rings before and never found them to work well, so save your money!

Serving and storage

This pie is best served after it has cooled, so the fruit filling has time to set up. But there’s nothing wrong with warm and a bit runny!

Leftover pie can be covered and kept on your counter-top for a few days. It does not need to be refrigerated. It is possible to freeze pie, but I don’t think it keeps the same texture.

To make pie ahead of time, I will make the crust in advance. You can keep pie crust dough in the refrigerator for two or three days or freezer for three to six months. It’s always great to have extra pie crust in the freezer that you can use for future pies, pot pies, pop tarts, or pie crust cookies and rugelach!

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