This is a recipe inspired by a creation described by Nigel Slater in his book, Eat. It’s a very Christmasy recipe, and he describes spending his entire Christmas Eve listening to carols and rolling, filling, baking, stuffing…..
My life isn’t like that, and so I have to simplify.
Recipe for Christmas hybrid pie
Serves 10
Ingredients
- 500g/1 lb ready-made shortcrust pastry – the best you can find – or use this recipe
- 6 tbsp icing sugar (if you’ve made the shortcrust and added in the sugar to the pastry dough, leave this out) plus another 6 tbsp to make the icing
- 150g/1 cup/5 oz dried cranberries
- 270g/10 oz soft dried apricots
- 270g/10 oz soft dried prunes
- 150g/1 cup/5 oz fat sultanas
- 100g/⅓ cup shelled pistachios
- 150g/7 tbsps apricot jam
- 150g/7 tbsps honey
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp allspice
- 2 green cardamom pods – crushed in a mortar and pestle
- zest of an orange
- zest and juice of a lemon
- 120ml/½ cup marsala
- 300 ml/1¼ cups whipping cream
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Roll out the pastry on a floured board, sieve over the icing sugar, fold, and roll out again.
- Line a cake tin with a removable base with the pastry to cover the bottom and about 5 cm/3” up the sides – it shouldn’t be too thick. You should have enough left over to make a lid – throw away anything you have left over at the end – you don’t want the pastry to be thick.
- Chop the prunes and the apricots to be about the same size as the cranberries (save a few cranberries to garnish).
- Mix all together in a big mixing bowl and add the sultanas.
- Roughly chop the pistachios and add those.
- Add the jam, honey, spices and zest.
- Stir in the marsala, mix all together well.
- Fill the pastry with the fruit filling.
- Cover with the pastry lid and pinch the edges together with the pastry wall below to seal.
- Pierce a couple of holes in the lid.
- Bake for 1½ hours, take out and leave to cool.
- Mix 6 tbsp icing sugar with the juice of the lemon to make icing. Pour over the top of the pie and leave to set.
- Whip the cream.
- Serve the pie warm and offer the cream alongside.
