Blackberry Skillet Pie
current situation: blackberry pie
Baked in a skillet rather than a pie dish, which is not an affectation. Cast iron holds far more heat than ceramic and drives it up through the bottom crust, and a soggy bottom is the only real failure mode of a fruit pie.
The other half of that problem is thickening. Blackberries release an enormous amount of juice and it has to be dealt with before they go in the pastry, not hoped about afterwards. Cornflour and a half hour of sitting does it.
Those thick dark bubbles round the edge in the picture are the sign it is done. Not the colour of the crust — the bubbles. A pie pulled before the filling boils is a pie with raw starch in it.
- Feeds
- 8
- Hands-on
- 45 minutes
- Bake
- 55 minutes
- Done when
- The juice bubbles thickly
What you need
The pastry
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 sticks very cold butter, cubed
- 1/2 cup ice water, with 1 tbsp vinegar in it
The filling
- 8 cups blackberries
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cornflour
- Zest and juice of 1 lemon
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- A pinch of salt
- 2 tbsp butter, in pieces on top
The lid
- 1 egg, beaten
- 2 tbsp coarse sugar
How it goes
1 — Keep every part of the pastry cold
Butter cubed and frozen fifteen minutes, water with ice in it, and a splash of vinegar which inhibits gluten and keeps it tender. Flakes come from solid butter, not blended butter.
2 — Leave visible pieces of butter in the dough
Rubbed or pulsed only until it looks like coarse gravel with flat flakes in it. Those flakes steam in the oven and that steam is what lifts the layers.
3 — Two discs, chilled at least an hour
Divided, flattened, wrapped, fridge. Pastry rolled straight after mixing shrinks back in the oven.
4 — Toss the fruit and let it sit 30 minutes
Blackberries with sugar, cornflour, lemon, cinnamon and salt. Half an hour on the counter so the juice comes out and the starch hydrates in it before any heat is involved.
5 — Line the cold skillet, no blind bake
Parchment in the pan, bottom crust laid in and up the sides. The skillet itself is doing the job a blind bake would.
6 — Fill, butter on top, lid on, seal and cut vents
Filling in with all its juice, butter dotted over, the second disc laid on and crimped. Several real vents cut through — the crack across the middle in the picture is steam escaping and it is meant to happen.
7 — 425°F for 20, then 375°F for 35
Hot at first to set the bottom crust fast, then down so the fruit cooks through without the lid burning. Egg wash and coarse sugar before it goes in.
pro tip — Put a tray on the shelf below. This pie will boil over and burnt blackberry juice on an oven floor is a weekend's work.
8 — Wait for thick slow bubbles at the edge
Not a thin fast simmer — thick, slow, lazy bubbles. That means the starch has reached temperature and the filling will set.
9 — Cool at least two hours before cutting
Cut warm, it runs off the plate. Two hours and it slices. Four is better and nobody has ever managed it.
Current situation. Ice cream, and do not argue about it. LFG.