A tarty pie...

I love this time of the year, you can spend all the time you want indoors without feeling like you are not taking advantage of a "sunny" day (as sunny as they get London...). You don't have to think about whether you have a tan or that you need to wear a skirt/ dress without tights. Well maybe that's just me. It's the season of comfort, I love the feeling and comfort of knowing that winter and Christmas are around the corner but not here just yet.

So to celebrate autumn or fall as they say in the US, I decided to make mini pies (in tart pans...). Without a shadow of a doubt, I associate pies with America. I have also been reading US wedding posts and it seems to have been the rage at weddings too. It's a great idea, I would gladly have pie over stiff fruit cake any day. We love a good blueberry pie in Sweden too, even if it's not freshly made, especially on cold winter nights and we have quite a few of those!

I have lost count of how many times I have had Frödinge paj!

On with the post...

I used Mary Berry's pastry recipe;
175g plain flour
50g butter (cold)
50g vegetable shortening, I used Trex.
2 tbsp of water

Rub the flour and butter+ shortening together to get a breadcrumb texture and then add the water. Knead the dough gently into a dough and wrap up in a clingfilm. Put it in the fridge.

I made the filling with Waitrose's frozen smoothie berry mix. I drained the berries and added a tbsp of cornflour. The bag will give you quite a lot of filling and you can make more then the four mini tart tins I did. I wanted them to be filled to the brim! Add sugar to your taste, I put in 4 tbsp of golden caster sugar and mixed.

The mixture doesn't look very appealing but works great in pies!

I rolled out the pastry and lined four mini tart pans. I brushed blackcurrant curd at the bottom of each tart and filled them with the berries. I cut the lids out with a tart pan and used a flower cutter to make the pattern.

I brushed them with just milk because I didn't want to waste an egg...silly I know.

As you can see; filling these to the brim has a downside too, we had some spillage issues.
I have learnt for next time :0)

I served them on blue and red plates as a homage to the American pie, though these were probably far away from the typical pie. They were delicious and warmed us right up after a walk about in the rain!

My younger brother was here this weekend and generously brought a bag of Swedish goodies, more of that in the next post!

Hope you have a great week!

Ciao! x