Blackberry and apple jam

This was so easy:

• 600 g Blackberries, washed & drained
• 500 g Bramley apples, peeled, cored and cut into berry sized chunks
• 1.1 kg Granulated sugar
• 300 ml Water
• 10g Butter

Instructions

1. Put the water and apple chunks in a preserving pan and simmer gently until soft (about 5 mins).
2. Add the blackberries, bring to the boil and simmer until soft (about 15 – 20 mins).
3. Add the sugar off the heat stirring to dissolve the crystals.
4. Heat the pan gently to ensure all the sugar dissolves, then boil rapidly for 10 mins.
5. Take off the heat and test a large drop of jam on a chilled saucer and if it crinkles after a couple of mins it’s ready.
6. If not boil for another 2 mins and repeat test until ready.
7. Remove excess scum with a slotted spoon and then stir in the butter to remove the rest.
8. Ladle into sterilised jars. Makes 1.8 kg.

Reading between the lines, the apple could be increased: I did approximately equal quantities peeled, cored and chopped apple with blackberries, as my blackberry picking was rather sparse. I also used just over three quarters of the amount of sugar, sugar being bad for you and all that... the jam was a wobbly set, but still worked...

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? !