We’ve got a load of apples and a few plums and raspberries from the garden, which is the perfect excuse for a fruit pie!

We’re going to following this Cook’s Illustrated recipe, just adding in some plums and raspberries to the filling.

Due to my warm hands I make the pastry in the food processor, but I don’t bring it together in the food processor, as I want to have some lumps of fats to make it nice and flaky as well as short. Instead I bring it together with a knife, then form into two pieces and chill.

After chilling one piece gets formed into the base in a glass dish, the other rolled out for the top, with extras getting made into leaves and butterflies for decoration. These all go back into the fridge. Hopefully all the chilling will offset contact with my warm hands, and the warm humid weather…

Eventually it’s time to mix up the filling of fruit, sugar, spices and flour and put it into the pie, making a mound in the middle.

Then the top goes on, with an egg white wash and demerara sugar coating, and finally air vents get put in.

 Then it’s an hour of baking, starting at 200C fan, rotating and down to 170C fan half way through.

Then it cools on a wire rack for four hours. FOUR HOURS!? Actually as it happens that’s a perfect time to have for pudding. In the meantime we’ll have to wait as it wafts its fresh pie smell, cartoon style, through the house.