I’ve had a few distractions today in getting this posted. First, I started on this post while waiting for pizza delivery from Hill Country Pizzeria. They got lost so I began to work on my sunday posting for pie 37, a simple peach and blackberry pie. They showed up in the middle of my masterpiece of type. So I broke for dinner – pizza and wings. As I started to motivate so I might finish this, I had a certain cat named Ginger stand, or I should say lay on my way:

When cuteness lays in the way of discipline

The base recipe for this comes from the bon appétit Desserts cookbook by Barbara Fairchild.  This recipe calls for double crust but I just made it single crust. I also changed the cook times based on a single crust. The edited cook times are listed below.

This selection comes from my wife, Tammi. It’s two very good choices in a row. Why, thank you!

The crust!:

1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated solid vegetable shortening or lard, frozen, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

2 1/2 tbsp. (or more) ice water

Blend the flour, sugar and salt together in a food processor. Add butter and shortening using on-off turns until mix resembles a coarse meal. Transfer to a large bowl. Add ice water and combine. Form dough into a ball and flatten into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill at least 20 minutes.

The filling!:

1 1/2 lbs. ripe peaches (about 6 small ones)

3 cups fresh blackberries

2/3 cup plus 1 tbsp. sugar

3 tbsp. unbleached all-purpose flour

Vanilla ice cream

Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Drop the peaches into the water; cook 30 seconds. Remove with slotted spoon and drop into a strainer. Rinse peaches under cold water to cool. Slip skins off peaches. Note: this is known as blanching:) So today, I blanched. Halve, pit and slice peaches

Peach and Blackberry Pie

( your yield should be 3 3/4 – 4 cups)

Position rack in lower third of your oven and pre-heat to 400F. While you await the heat, mix the peaches, blackberries, sugar and flour, tossing to blend. Set aside.

Roll out dough on lightly floured surface or baking cloth to 13 inch disk and transfer to pie plate. For this pie, my first crust transfer became a wreck, so I re-chilled the dough and tried again. I didn’t roll it out large enough so I removed the crust edge from the top of the pie plate. Thus, it looks like a pie plate of baked fruit:)

Spoon the filling into the crust. Place cookie sheet under pie and transfer to oven. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes. Open oven and cover pie with foil so the fruit doesn’t dry out. Reduce heat and bake for another 30 minutes or until the peaches are soft and tender when cut with a knife and the juices bubble thickly.

We had some fruit left over so my wife took the remnants and turned it into a topping for the ice cream.

It’s very sweet and the peach flavor really stands out. I’m not too happy with the crust and don’t think I want to use vegetable shortening in the crusts I’ll make down the road. It tastes great with the vanilla ice cream and the sauce my wife made is a very nice touch. Overall, it’s pretty basic but a perfect pie for this time of year.