Chloe-Rose Crabtree’s Blackberry and Kiwi Lattice Pie
In this final instalment of her series on American pies, Chloe-Rose Crabtree shares a fruit pie to bring brightness to the depths of winter. Photos by Georgia Rudd.
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Chloe-Rose Crabtree’s Blackberry & Kiwi Lattice Pie
In this final instalment of her series on American pies, Chloe-Rose Crabtree shares a fruit pie to bring brightness to the depths of winter. Photos by Georgia Rudd.
For me, if there’s a choice between cake and pie, it’s no contest: the interplay of flaky, tender, ever-so-slightly salty pie crust with a creamy custard or a sweet-but-tart fruit filling is my idea of dessert perfection. To conclude this series on American-style pies, I’m sharing a recipe for exactly that: a blackberry and kiwi pie. After a rich celebratory meal of roasted meats over the festive period, the brightness of a pie like this is just what you need.
When I originally developed this recipe for a pie party at Anna Higham’s Quince Bakery, the filling was made with foraged blackberries and fresh tomatillos. But because fresh tomatillos are hard to find in the UK, here I’ve used kiwi as a substitute. Like tomatillos, kiwis have plenty of pectin to set the filling, and if you select hard kiwis they should be just as tart. Similarly, it’s now too late to pick wild blackberries, but frozen fruit will work just as well, if not better – fruit intensifies in flavour when frozen.
Although pies tend to be more demurely decorated than cakes, there are still plenty of options, from decorative pastry techniques to crumble toppings studded with nuts, to toasted meringue. When making fruit pies, I often embellish the top crust with pastry cut outs in the shape of the fruit used. If I’m really looking to impress, I always go for a lattice crust: it appears incredibly complicated but really isn’t, especially if you cut the lattice strips thickly. But even a plain crust adorned simply with large sugar crystals can be incredibly gorgeous – there’s something so romantic about how the pastry clings to the contours of the filling while baking.
In the recipe that follows, I provide instructions for all three of these decorative approaches: cut outs, a lattice, or a simple sugar-encrusted top. The pie filling is very simple, so you’ll have plenty of time to hone your pastry decorating skills.
Blackberry & Kiwi Lattice Pie
As I’ve explained previously, successful pastry making depends on ensuring that your ingredients are at the right temperature and that you give your dough time to relax. I like to prep my pastry before I make my filling so that I can give it plenty of time to rest and firm up before I fill the pie. The colder your pastry is before it goes in the oven, the more flaky and delicious it will be.
Makes 1 x 22cm pie
Time 2 hrs plus cooling
Ingredients
1 x batch of pastry dough (recipe here)