Peaches and cream

Growing up with American children’s books, I have an image of fruit pies as the epitome of healthful plenty. Peach pie, apple pie, blueberry pie. They must have beautiful golden crusts, possibly with latticed tops and come with thick cream. Ideally they are made with fruit that you have picked yourself, and obviously they must be made by a plump and smiling housewife.

I had never eaten such a thing - apart from apple pie, my mother only made fruit tarts, and always with horrible short pastry - until last week.

Staying at the in-laws for the weekend, they had gone out, the Man was asleep or working on his computer or similarly unavailable, the young lady and myself decided to amuse ourselves by baking something.

This is one of my favourite games - get out the cookbooks and find something that sounds delicious but you’ve never eaten and then make it.

This time I’d brought my copy of the Joy of Cooking with me, so we just looked in that. After a lot of discussion of what we were capable of/equipped to do/liked the look of, we settled on Peach and Raspberry Pie with Flaky Cream Cheese Pastry.

The pastry is very easy (I think the cream cheese really makes it much easier) and if you have a freezer to hand, it’s not so important to have cold hands.

Flaky Cream Cheese Pastry:
1 cup plus 2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3 oz butter (75g) (diced and put in the freezer for ten minutes)
3 oz cream cheese (75g) (also put in the freezer for ten minutes)
2-3 tbsp iced water (or cream, if you worry that it won’t be rich enough)

Whisk the dry ingredients and then cut in the fat until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized ingredients. This is not the moment to get over-precise - you actually want there to be unevenly sized lumps, because that’s what makes it flaky.
Add the liquid very slowly and cut the dough with a spatula, just enough to bring the dough together in a lump.
Divide the dough into two not quite even lumps, shape into discs, wrap in clingfilm and put them in the fridge for at least an hour.

Then roll out the larger disc to around 13 inches and fit it into a 9-inch shallow pie dish or tart tin. Make sure to leave at least 3/4 of an inch overhang all round, and trim it neatly. Put it back in the fridge.

Now for the pie lid. Roll out the other disc of dough to around 12 inches and either put it back to chill again or start doing basket work with it. We went fancy and made it into woven lattice, which turned out to be a lot less work (although quite time-consuming) than you might think. Instructions can be found here.

Make the lattice on a little tray or something, so that you can put it into the freezer to stiffen while you make the filling.

Filling
10 peaches, peeled and slice
2 cups raspberries (you’re aiming for around 5 cups of fruit altogether)
3/4 cup sugar
3 1/2 tbsp cornflour
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)
Large pinch of salt

Mix it all together and let stand for 15 minutes. At this point, you should turn the oven on to heat to 220°C.

Now stick it in the pie, place the lid carefully on top and bring the edges of the lower crust over to hold it in place, pinching it firmly. If you haven’t made a lattice, remember to cut steam vents.

Brush the lid with milk and scatter a wee bit of sugar over it to make it pretty.

Put it in the oven for half an hour, then turn the heat down to 180°C, slip a baking tray underneath it and bake for another 25-35 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling up.

Let it cool before eating it - fruit and sugar get pretty hot!