With Jennie visiting and the last of the pear pie meeting its timely death upon the season 1 finale of "Bones", I decided to try making a strawberry pie. I wanted to be a little more experimental this time, so the recipe below is more like a best guess as to what went into mine. One thing is for certain: buy a lot of strawberries! I don't think you can have too much, and I was debating how to put more on before I went to bed. I did a lot of research for this one, and specifically wanted to avoid any "cheating", specifically with regards to using strawberry jello, food coloring, or kool aid. I settled on a vartiation of this recipe. I also tried a different crust recipe that makes more of a pastry. I based it off a recipe from here, but changed a bit since the provided recipe just seemed to much like a pastry. I'll put the crust at the bottom as you could just use whatever or buy store-bought. I also made lemon whipped cream to top it off, which turned out amazing!
Strawberry Pie
2 16oz packages of strawberries
3 tbl corn starch
1 cup ginger ale (I know, right? crazy!)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
Cut the tops off your strawberries (I tend to do a core like motion, kind of particular about how I cut strawberries. Thanks mom) and separate about 2 cups worth. Mash up the 2 cups of strawberries, mix with water, and cook in a pot on medium heat until it boils. Whisk the corn starch into the ginger ale (you will get fiz!) and then dump into the boiling strawberries and stir stir stir. Cook until it boils a bit, then turn the heat down to low. At this point, taste the mixture (dip a spoon in, make sure it cools!) to test the sweetness. If its a bit tart, or just sweet enough, stir in a bit of the sugar and repeat. The sweetness of this really depends on how the strawberries are. If you have some tart berries, add lots of sugar. If you have sweet berries, you many not need any. Once you get the sweetness right, remove it from the heat. It should be the thickness of Clam Chowder soup about. Let this cool to room temperature while you cut the rest of the strawberries and/or cook your crust. Once cool, generously coat your berries with the mixture, and pour into cooled cooked pie crust. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge for 1 day.
Lemon Whipped Cream
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup powered sugar
zest from 1/2 large lemon
Freeze a metal bowl and beaters until cold. Whip cream, sugar, and zest on high until firm.
Crust:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbl sugar
3/8 cup shortening (sorry for the weird measurement, thats what I had left!)
5 tbls butter
4 tbl ice water
1 egg
Preheat to 375, and mix up the flour, sugar, and salt really well. I used a whisk. Then cut in the shortening and butter (this is what I messed up on the pear pie), resulting in sizes no bigger than a pea. Fold in the ice water until a doughy mixture forms. Wrap in plastic and place in the refrigerator. The orginal recipe says for an hour, but I could only leave it in for about 15 minutes, seemed okay but a bit to doughy when I rolled it. Roll out and place in pie plate. I cut the excess and folded around the edges for a nice look. Separate the egg, and brush the white over the crust. This seals the crust a bit to prevent it from getting too soggy. Bake for 15 minutes, then poke with a fork/knife to let some steam out. Continue baking for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. My crush shrunk waaay to much in the oven, and one site I read suggested friging it for a 30min after putting it in the pie plate. But again, didn't really have time for that tonight :(.
Other thoughts
Try to chill everything for the dough before use. I wasn't able to chill the shortening as I didn't have time, but its supposed to make it even better.
When I made the filling mixture, I put in a 1/2 cup sugar off the bat. It was waaaay to sweet! Be carefull when adding it in, remember the ginger ale is mostly sugar anyway. I ended up with a lot of the filling, I may adjust the measurements sometime for a better fit.
Don't use diet ginger ale, as heating nutrisweet will make it bitter.
Results
I wrote the above before, this pie turned out amazing! The crust was very desserty, which worked well with the uncooked strawberries and whipped cream. I will def. be making this again! Thanks to Missy for taking the picture!
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