By Crazy Eyes’s Exploding Strawberry Pie
I’ve actually, surprisingly, never had strawberry pie. What’s not surprising is that I found strawberry pie delicious! It tastes like…well, strawberries. So unless you HATE strawberries you’ll enjoy this.
To start, I had to prep the pie crust. You can use a store-bought, pre-made pie crust, but there is a recipe included in the book so I decided to use it. Besides, homemade always tastes better!
The flour, salt, and butter are cut together with a pastry blender before adding ice water to keep it all together. It’s then shaped like a disc, wrapped in plastic wrap, and left in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. I did this part yesterday and left it overnight.
Once the dough is chilled, it’s rolled out on a clean work surface and then shaped into a pie pan before being popped back into the refrigerator for another 30+ minutes.
Once it’s chilled again, the pie shell should be pre-baked. This prevents the bottom from getting soggy later, after you add in the fillings. In order to stop the bottom from puffing up too much, tin foil is placed over the crust and filled with dried beans before it goes into the oven. Then the beans are removed and it cooks a little bit longer just to brown up the crust.
For the filling, about half the strawberries are blended and the rest are set aside (or cut in half if they’re really big). Unfortunately, about 1/3 of my strawberries went rotten so I was working with fewer strawberries to begin with. I opted to blend the same amount of strawberries as the recipe asks for, and just use fewer full-sized strawberries. This seemed to work out just fine!
Sugar, cornstarch, and salt are combined in a saucepan, and then water, the pureed strawberries, lemon juice, and butter are added as well. It’s all mixed together and simmered for 2-3 minutes until thick and glossy.
The full / halved strawberries are arranged in the bottom of the pie crust, and the cooked berries are poured over top. If you’re using the correct amount of whole strawberries, you’d place only half the strawberries and pour only half the cooked ones over, and then repeat with the other half to form two layers.
No need to cook! Just let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate 4-6 hours so it’s set before you serve it.
Taste: 9/10
Like I mentioned up top, this tastes like strawberries! Not surprising I know, but that’s pretty much all it tastes like. It’s very sweet. I enjoyed this pie, but I prefer other flavors so I don’t think I’d make it again.
Difficulty: Average
There are a lot of steps and this is a very time consuming pie if you’re making the crust from scratch, but nothing is overly difficult. If you’re just doing the filling and not the pie crust, I might even consider this “easy.”
Cost: Cheap
The pie crust ingredients are very common, and you may not need to pick up anything new: flour, salt, butter, and ice water. If you’re not doing a homemade crust, add “pre-made pie crust” to your grocery list.
For the filling, you’ll need strawberries, sugar, cornstarch, salt, lemon juice, and butter.
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