Cook the Book: Blackberry and Summer Apple Pie

"[Photographs: John Kernick] There's a lot to love about this Blackberry and Summer Apple Pie from Andrea Reusing's Cooking in the Moment. Sure, I might be a little biased since it was the first warm weather pie I've baked this season, but man, it was pretty incredible. Tart, seedy little blackberries are mixed with slices of crisp apple and baked in a crumbly, lightly sweet cornmeal crust. It's that great sort of juicy, oozy pie where the filling leaks out, making for little bits of caramelized crust around the edges. Since the crust has a bit of sugar in it you can hold back on oversweetening the filling and give the berries and apples a chance to cook down and release their natural sugar. During baking the blackberries have a tendency to almost melt, dyeing the apple slices a vibrant shade of fuchsia. This is a great transitional pie, with elements of both spring and fall. If your blackberries are not quite as sweet as you'd like them to be you can always doctor the ratio of apples to berries, balancing out the sweetness. Or you can sweeten things up after the fact with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream. As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Cooking in the Moment to give away this week. Adapted from Cooking in the Moment by Andrea Reusing. Copyright © 2011. Published by Clarkson Potter. Available wherever books are sold. All Rights Reserved...."