Fresh Strawberry Pie

Nothing says summer better than a fresh strawberry pie. We were lucky enough to get big juicy strawberries from a local farmers' market the past few weeks. The strawberries don't last long so a pie was a great way to use them up but still get maximum flavor.




We used the pie crust we used to make apple pie. You can also buy a frozen crust.

Here is a quick repeat of the pie crust recipe:

One pie crust

1/2 cup butter (keep cold until you use it)
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 Tbs sugar
1/4 cup cold (ice cold) water

Mix the flour and sugar in a bowl. Cut your butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture. Cut the butter into the flour until only small pea-sized pieces are left.

Add water and mix until everything sticks together. Do not use any extra water! It is very easy to put too much in and make the entire thing a sticky mess.

The secret to a good pie crust is very cold ingredients and not to handle the dough too much. Use your hands to get the dough into a ball but do not spend extra time kneading the dough.

Our first try...

Place the dough ball in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove, roll out, and cut into whatever shape you need.

We have no pie pan in Germany so we made mini pies using cupcake holders. One time we place the dough into the cupcake holders (made tiny pies) and one time we turned the cupcake holders over and draped the dough over them. This made much larger pies but not as perfectly round. We liked this way better but unfortunately do not have any photos of these.



If you are willing to spend the time (we recommend it), put your crust back into the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes before you bake it.

Bake 20-25 minutes on 350 F (180 C). Since strawberry pie does not get baked it is important that your pie crust is completely cooked before adding the filling.

Once your pie crust is finished, remove from oven and let it cool to room temperature.


Strawberry filling:

This is the recipe for one regular pie. We only made 1/3 of this when we made our mini pies.

About 5-6 cups of fresh strawberries
1 cup sugar
3 T corn starch
3/4 cup cold water
salt





Slice up some (not all!) of your strawberries until you have about about 3 cups sliced.






Add them to a pot and mash the strawberries until the juice comes out and only small pieces are left.


 



We used a fork but a potato masher would probably be even easier.








Place the pan on the stove over medium heat. Add the sugar and a dash of salt and mix well.





 
While the strawberry mixture comes to a light boil, mix the cold water and corn starch in a separate glass. Stir until the corn starch is completely dissolved.

Once the strawberry mixture is boiling, add the corn starch and water. Bring the mixture back to a boil while constantly stirring. The mixture should thicken up (about 4-5 minutes of stirring).





Once the mixture is thick, remove from heat and set aside. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature. We moved our mixture out of the pan and into another container to speed up the cooling process.



Putting the pie together:


Once everything is at room temperature you can put together your pie.

Cut the stems off the rest of your strawberries. We were making mini pies so we also had to cut our strawberries in half.





Add the strawberries to the pie crust and cover with the strawberry sauce. Place in the refrigerator and let set for at least two hours before serving.

Serve that day! This pie does not keep very well.


We made this recipe three days in a row for different events...got to get as much strawberry pie in as possible during strawberry season!


This recipe was adapted from Jamie Cooks It Up