I was talking to a friend from CC about the differences in pie making between the USA and the UK and decided to bake some pies. I used the shortcrust recipe from Tesco's Finest pastry flour which produced a fine pastry and added some sugar. For the filling, I cooked one Granny Smith apple and a pack of blackberries (225g) with sugar and added several leaves of wide leaf basil towards the end. The fruit only needed about 10 minutes to cook. The aroma was so enticing, the flavour divine! I did not chill my pastry dough before pushing it into the muffin tin and it ended up very fragile. The sides of the pastry had an almost cake-like texture which is probably caused by the extra sugar or because they were so thin. As you can see by the photo, cooking the fruit before baking makes it easier to avoid bubbling up and there is no need to add anything else to make the filling stable. My only regret was not questioning the size of the pastry recipe. It was hardly enough to make six pies! Tesco will be hearing from me about that matter ;)