Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble Pie

Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble Pie

I grow strawberries and rhubarb in my garden, and wanted to find a way to combine them in a dessert: I wanted to make a pie, but my dad wanted a crumble, et voila!  Combined the two, and it worked out really well.  

Use a 9inch round, fluted tin, ungreased for this recipe.

Ingredients - Pastry

 - 175g plain flour

 - pinch of salt

 - 2 tbsp icing sugar

 - 110g unsalted (cold) butter, diced

 - 1 egg yolk mixed with 1tbsp of ice cold water

Ingredients - Filling

 - 6 medium stalks of rhubarb, sliced

 - 300g strawberries, sliced

 - 3tbsp cornflour

 - 85g caster sugar

Ingredients - Crumble Topping

 - 130g plain flour

 - 110g demerara sugar

 - 110g unsalted (cold) butter, diced

Method (in a food processor as I did)

1. To make the pastry, put the flour, salt, and icing sugar into the food processor and mix until combined.  Then add the cold diced butter and process until combined.  Then, with the machine running, slowly add the egg mixture until the mixture comes together.

2. Wrap the pastry in clingfilm and refrigerate for 1 hour (I only had time to do this for 15 minutes, and this ended up, pleasantly, with a really flaky pastry, but was really difficult to roll out in one piece, so I'd recommend chilling for longer).

3. Roll out the pastry and put into the tin, don't trim yet! - put back in the fridge until you're ready to fill with your fruit.

4. Turn your oven to 205 degrees centigrade, or 190 in a fan-assisted oven.

5. Put the sliced strawberries and rhubarb in a bowl with the caster sugar and cornflour.  Mix these together vigorously - the strawberries will release their juices and create a syrupy sauce.

6. Drain the majority of the liquid off of the fruit mixture (we don't want any soggy bottoms!).  I kept this to one side and mixed it with custard, which made a really lovely strawberry custard.

7.  Remove your pie tin from the fridge and fill with your fruit mixture.

8. Put all of the crumble topping ingredients in the food processor and process until they reach the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs.

9. Sprinkle your crumble topping on top of the fruit - as much or as little as you like.

10. Bake for 25 minutes, at which point, remove from the oven and trim off the excess pastry 

11. Bake for another 20-25 minutes, cover it with tinfoil if you are worried about over-browning.

12. Cool for 20 minutes, and then remove from the tin - serve with cream, ice-cream, custard, or strawberry custard like I did!