With my newfound grasp of shortcrust pastry I’m filled with grand ideas of what I can do with it. Unfortunately they don’t always work out as I hoped. This was supposed to be a bramble pie covered in golden, sweet pastry which I could perch some cold vanilla ice cream on. Then I would crack it open to reveal steaming brambles in their syrupy sauce inside with the ice cream melting all over it.
What actually happened was that the sauce from the brambles made the pie sides and bottom a soggy lump of stodge and they never cooked properly. While I had achieved a lovely golden pastry on top the sides were a mess. It was still edible and tasted great but a sad failure for what was a great idea. To add insult to injury the next day I was watching Saturday Kitchen and James Martin did exactly the same pie but made it perfectly. The git.
I’m not going to give you a proper recipe for this. If you really want to try it just add some sugar to a standard shortcrust pastry recipe. For the filling you just need to gently heat the brambles in a pan and add sugar to help break the berries down. Taste the sauce until it’s sweet enough and then take it off the heat.
Mince and Skirlie 
Oh dear!
I think I know where I went wrong with this. Firstly, using a ramekin instead of a pie tin. Not enough heat got through to the pastry. Secondly I made the sauce first before putting it in the pie. I should have just combined the berries and sugar and put them in the pie to break down during cooking.
Chris