Damson Plum Pie – and a guest blogger!

Hello, CCM (Caked Crusader’s Ma) here. The Caked Crusader has bestowed me the honour of being her first guest blogger. Fruit pies were the first thing that I ever baked. I was taught how to make them when I was 11 years old by my cookery teacher at school.

Pastry decorations freehand....

...or using cutters:

The only change I’ve made to the original version I was taught is being much more generous with the fruit filling. One of my hates is meanness of fruit. I find that a lot of the time you have to play the game of "Find or guess the fruit in this". Hope you are getting the message - 3lbs of plums is not too many.

As reported by the CC our damson plum tree has excelled itself this year. To date we have picked over 60lbs and I think there is more than that amount still on the tree. I have lost count of how many plum pies I have made to eat and freeze over the past few weeks. Hope you will enjoy this recipe as much as we all do.

Footnote from the Caked Crusader: The recipe is given in imperial measurements as the CCM doesn’t do metric.

Serving suggestion:

Ingredients:
3lbs (damson) plums
2ozs caster sugar
1 egg + a little drop of milk to bind together
8ozs self raising flour
4ozs Cookeen (or Trex)
Pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons of water

To serve: ice cream or custard

Method for the plums:

-I like to poach the plums a few hours ahead of making the pastry so they are cold.

-Pour the water into base of a large saucepan.

-Cut each plum in half and remove stone (very quick and easy).

-Layer into saucepan with the sugar.

-Simmer on a small heat until just beginning to soften (they should still look like plums - not mushy).

-Turn into a dish to cool for a few hours.

Method for the pastry:

-Grease an 8" pie dish.

-Put all the flour + pinch of salt into a bowl.

-Rub in the Cookeen until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

-Add egg and enough milk to bind mixture together into a soft dough.

-Cut dough into two equal pieces.

-Roll out one piece on a floured board to fit your dish.

-Drain all the juice from the plums (do not throw this juice away it's lovely to drink).

-Spoon plums into pastry base.

-Roll remaining dough to fit on top of plums and to overlap base.

-Trim pastry edge with knife.

-Seal the top and bottom edges on dish with a fork dipped into water.

-Cut a few slits in top of pastry.

-Roll out trimmings to make decorations for top of pie (these can be cut out freehand or with a small pastry cutter).

-Cover pie and dish with Clingfilm and refrigerate for an hour or two or overnight if you prefer.

-Remove dish from fridge and brush top of pie with beaten egg or milk.

-Bake in centre of oven at 180 C for 40 minutes giving pie a turnaround halfway through cooking.

-When a golden colour remove from oven and sprinkle top with caster sugar.

-Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

-Eat

-(I might have borrowed the last two lines from someone else but originality is so tiring!)