Strawberry Pie!

The Mister strained his back at work the other week so I decided I'd bake him a pie to make things a little better (and to eliminate another item from my Thirty Before 30).   I baked a fresh strawberry pie (with help from my favorite sous chef, the Mister) using Ina Garten's "Perfect Pie Crust" and a strawberry pie recipe I found on allrecipes.com.  

Ingredients (crust):

12 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt 

1 tablespoon sugar

1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening

6 to 8 tablespoons (about 1/2 cup) ice water

 We rolled the dough using my newest kitchen gadget, my French rolling pin!

 The rolled dough was rolled over the pie pan and fitted.

 I tried to make the crust pretty, like the pre-made crusts I usually buy from the store.

 I poked some air holes to let the crust breathe while baking.

We didn't have pie weights so I filled the foil lined crust with the glass beads we usually use for our flower vases.

The Barefoot Contessa pie crust recipe isn't written for blind baking so I followed the baking instructions I found for another pie crust recipe:

Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes 

Bake the crust at 400 degrees for 15 minutes

Remove from the oven 

Lower the oven temperature to 350, and bake for an additional 8-10 minutes (I ended up baking the crust for about 15 minutes)

While the crust was chilling, baking, and chilling again we worked on the pie filling.

Ingredients:

1 quart fresh strawberries

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch 

3/4 cup water

 Placed half of the strawberries into the cooled pie crust.

 We put the other half of the strawberries in a food processor and placed it in a saucepan with the other ingredients.  I decided to add a gelatin mixture (1 1/2 teaspoon and 3 tablespoon iced water) to the saucepan so the finished pie would be easier to cut, hold its shape, and the wouldn't be a big mess in the pan when just a couple pieces are left.

Voila!
Unfortunately we had to wait a few hours for the pie to set and cool.  It was beyond delish!

 I only have one pie pan so we had to think of what to do with the extra pie crust dough... we made an A&G creation: "pie snackers!" The Mister rolled the dough and cut them into circles, then we buttered them lightly and filled them with some goodies from around the kitchen: blackberries, strawberries, bananas, dark chocolate, Reese's peanut butter cups, and a cinnamon sugar mix.

 Yum yum yum!