Strawberry pie is a sweet herald that proclaims summer is here. I’ve been playing with a recipe (it seems a bit wrong to tamper with my Grandmother’s recipe, but I wanted to reduce the sweetness, add blueberries, and thicken the crust a bit–don’t tell her). Tonight I made my latest version; I’ll call it strawberry pie 3.0.
The first adaptation was to increase the dough in the crust by almost 50% as well as cutting back slightly on the Crisco content. It was noticeably thicker as I shaped it in the pie plate.
An unbaked crust is like a blank canvas. If it is to be pre-baked holes need to be poked in it. With this pie I used a symmetrical pattern. My last pie contained a portrait of Kermit the Frog. The possibilities are endless.
Not every canvas hosts a Mona Lisa.
The next step is to provide a chaperon to keep the crust from rebelling during the baking process. Being a horticulturist I have a plant bias, so I recruited some beans for the job.
Beans have a good influence on pie crusts.
Preparing the filling for the pie involves smashing strawberries with a meat tenderizer. How cool is that? I cut back the sugar content by 50%, which I had determined last week in strawberry pie 2.0 to be the perfect level of sweetness. I then added fresh blueberries into the layers, resulting in this:
Strawberries and blueberries, oh my.
The final stage is adding Cool Whip. The result is quite red, white, and blue.
Summer!
I think the blueberries are good but not essential. I plan to use them at times, but not every time I make this pie. As far as the dough and sweetness of the filling goes, I think this is as good as it gets.
I love the summer.
