We went mulberry picking the other day. Foraging in local parks and community land is fun, free and easy if you know what you’re looking for. We’ve been waiting for these mulberries to ripen for what seems like an eternity, but this weekend we were fortunate. It did require some dexterity on J’s part, as the bushes had been stripped on the easily accessible side, so all the remaining ripe berries were overhanging the creek. We persevered and ended up with about 500g of mulberries. Not really enough to make jam, but the perfect amount for mulberry pie.
You’ll have to excuse the picture of the pie – it was delicious, but I haven’t quite mastered my pastry yet. This pastry is extremely short, which means it was very crumbly and quite difficult to roll out. I do think it’s worth the extra time and energy to make your own pastry, however if that’s too intimidating, store-bought will also work.
If you don’t have access to wild mulberry bushes, other types of berries would work well. You might need to adjust the sugar levels depending on the natural sweetness of the berries. Strawberries are in season in Brisbane at the moment and they are deliciously sweet. I would probably reduce the sugar if using them.
Details
- Prep Time:
20 min - Cook Time:
45 min - Ready Time:
1 h, 5 min
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups Flour
- 250 grams Butter (unsalted), chilled and chopped into cubes
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Sugar
- Ice cold water (enough to bring the dough together, not more than 1/4 cup)
- 3 cups Mulberries
- 1 1/4 cups White sugar
- 1/4 cup Flour
- 2 tbsps Butter
- 1 tbsp Milk
Directions
For the pastry- Combine flour, butter, salt and sugar in a food processor.
- Pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- Slowly add ice water, one tablespoon at a time, and continue to pulse. The dough should start to form a ball and hold itself together.
- Turn the dough out onto plastic wrap. Split into two pieces and wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Remove from fridge and allow to warm up slightly.
- Lightly flour your bench and roll out into two large circles.
- Preheat oven to 200*.
- In a large bowl, mix berries with sugar and flour.
- Spray a pie dish with cooking oil. Line the bottom of the dish with one of the circles of dough.
- Add the berry and sugar mixture to the pie dish.
- Dot berries with butter.
- Cover the berries with the remaining pastry. You could try a lattice top - but it's more difficult than it looks!
- Brush the top of the pie with milk.
- Let the pie rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
- Bake pie in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. I recommend putting your pie on another baking tray to catch any sugar syrup spills so you don't have to clean your oven.
- Lower oven temperature to 175* and bake for an additional 30 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature. You can eat whilst still warm but it will be runny and quite messy!
26.09.10 | 
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