Soggy Bottom Pudding

Out for lunch with Alison and Richard Wildsmith, old friends from Nairobi who have been staying with us for a week, on holiday. I love it in the summer when friends come...
Choosing dessert from a selection of pastries made by the Austrian cook was a CHORE.  There was a wonderful selection - raspberry cheesecake, lemon tart, sachertorte, apple strudel...and mixed berry pie.  Not mixed berry tart, but PIE.
"No, we can't have that," proclaimed Richard P with great authority. "It'll have a soggy bottom."
This provoked much hilarity from Richard W, whose sense of humour verges on the scatalogical. And rude. That's why the two Richards get on so well.  But it was especially amusing to them as their wives found themselves sitting on chairs that had obviously been left outside overnight, as the seat cushions were rather damp - soggy, almost. Eventually, when we realised where our own particular dampness had come from, we changed chairs.
But soggy bottom was the phrase of the day.
So, for pudding that evening, I just HAD to make Soggy Bottom Pie...

SOGGY BOTTOM PIE

Pastry: 8 oz plain flour, 2 oz self-raising flour, 3 oz vegetable fat, 2 oz margarine, 3 oz sugar, cold water.

Roll out to line a 10" flan dish.

Cover the base of the pastry with a layer of thinly sliced peeled and cored cooking apples: minimum 2 apples, up to 4. Cover apples with a layer of fresh blackberries, washed and drained well, to come level with the top of the pastry. 

Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar.

Cover with remaining pastry (slit top to stretch into a lattice if the pastry doesn't quite fit), brush with water and sprinkle with 1 - 2 tablespoons sugar.

Bake for 30 minutes at 200 degrees.

Cream? Ice cream? Yummy custard? !

Cheesecakes

I was looking for a no-bake cheesecake recipe when I came across these tips for achieving a good BAKED cheesecake.

And then there is a variant on Joan's cheesecake/key lime pie:

crust: grind 400g ginger biscuits and mix in 150g melted margarine or butter, press into a loose-bottomed flan tin - 10 inches plus across.  chill

whip half a pint double cream
whip together for 1 minute 1 tin condensed milk and 200g cream cheese - low fat still works - with the juice of 4 limes and 1 lemon.
stir all together with the zest of the citrus as well

pour onto crust and chill for at least 2 hours