I first began making this bilberry pie recipe for my Grandma as it’s one of her favourite foods and have come to believe that the recipe below is the best for the pie as it makes your bilberries go quite far but also holds onto the fantastic flavours the bilberry has over its commercially grown cousin (the blueberry).

Click here to see our bilberry foraging guide

Makes 1 pie to serve 8

What you need:

Our Bilberry Pie Recipe

To Make the Pastry (or use premade short crust pastry):

300g plain flour
3tbsp water
150g butter
Pinch of salt

To make the filling for our Bilberry Pie Recipe:

500g cooking apples, peeled and cored (cut them as you like, diced, quartered)
200g bilberries
25g butter
100g caster sugar

To make the pastry:

Add the flour, salt and butter to a large bowl and rub the mixture together (using your fingers is more fun but a spoon can be used) until it resembles bread crumbs.
Now add the water, a tea spoon at a time, until your dough binds together sufficiently.
Wrap this in cling film and place in the fridge for 15 minutes.

To Make the Filling:

Heat the butter in a large pan and add the apples and sugar, leaving to cook for 5-10 minutes, depending on how soft you like your apples.
Now add your bilberries and cook the lot for a further 2 minutes.

Bringing it together and finishing off:

Pre-heat your oven to 200C
Take a medium sized oven proof dish and rub more or any remaining butter all around the inside.
Roll out one half of your pastry and use this to line your dish, you can either flash bake this now or put your filling straight in, either way – put the filling in.
Roll out the other half of your pastry and place it over your filling, on top of the dish, and cut off any excess.
Using a knife cut two 3cm holes in the top of your pie, sprinkle with a little more sugar and leave it to bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
Serve this hot with thick cream or lovely vanilla ice cream and enjoy.

That’s it, my absolute favourite pie to make each and every year, thinking about it now I should probably make a whole bunch of these and freeze them to enjoy later in the year, but I never have the inclination to do that as I usually end up eating all of the bilberries before the end of the week. And, if you’ve ever picked them, they are a delight, but they certainly are quite a bit of work to individually harvest.