Fresh and Easy Strawberry Pie

When I first moved back home to Louisiana a few years ago, I really missed not having more noticiablly different seasons. In Louisiana, we have a short fall, 5 minutes of winter, and 9 months of summer. And in between winter and summer, we have spring. Strawberry weather.  

Yes, while most of you are still struggling with frost and cold and even snow this late spring, we have folks sitting on the side of the road selling beautiful flats of Louisiana strawberries.  Sometimes from Hammond, sometimes from Ponchitoula, sometimes one of the other little towns in the top of the toe; what's commonly known as the northlake area, that little stretch of strawberry heaven along Interstate 12 north of Lake Pontchartrain. I don't know what it is about that area of the state, whether it's the soil or the weather, or something completely different, but they grow the best strawberries. 

I like strawberries almost every way you can eat them.  I like them so much I'll even slice some up and eat them with milk and sugar, like a bowl of cereal.  Or cream instead of milk, if I have it.  Even what we in the south euphemistically call "canned cream", which is nothing more than evaporated milk, poured straight over a warm cobbler or a cool bowl or fruit.  Yum. 

But by far my favorite thing to do when I have really good strawberries is make a fresh strawberry pie. 

Years ago when I worked at one of our local banks, one of our customers always brought a truckload of strawberries back from southeast Louisiana and sold them to his friends and neighbors, and he generously gave every employee of our bank a whole flat of strawberries. (There are definite advantages to living in a small southern town.)  The first time I got strawberries-by-the-flat after I was married, my husband said "Oh, good, strawberry pie!" I had an immediate vision of a cooked, two-crust pie, like apple pie or cherry pie, and turned up my nose, but he had something else in mind.  "My favorite!" he said, and tried to describe it, so as a dutiful wife, I started looking for recipes in my cookbooks.(Remember those? Where we used to find recipes before the internet!). 

I found several versions, and narrowed them down by practical, everyday ingredients and ease of application, and this is my tried-and-true version that I've used for years. It uses a combination of a cooked glaze and strawberry gelatin, but it uses less gelatin than many recipes, making a softer setting, fresher tasting glaze than some versions of this pie that I've eaten.

Ingredients:

• 1 c sugar
• 1 c water
• 4 T flour
• 4 T strawberry gelatin (that's half of a small box--this is easily doubled, I usually make these two at a time, using 2 c sugar, 2 c water, 1/2 c flour and the whole box of gelatin
• 1 pint (approximately) strawberries
• single pie crust (or two crusts if making two)

Step 1: pre-bake your pie crust, and allow to cool

You can make your own if you have time, or use a frozen pie crust.  If I don't make my own (which, honestly, I hardly ever do, I prefer the refrigerated roll out crusts.)  Be sure to pinch the edges and prick the bottom and sides. I baked this one at 375 for about 10-12 minutes.

Step 2: While your crust is baking and/or cooling,wash and hull your strawberries

Step 3: Stir together sugar, flour, and water and cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly while the sugar and flour dissolve, then regularly until the mixture comes to a boil and begins to thicken.  Allow to cook for another minute or so, stirring constantly again.

Step 4: Remove from heat and stir in gelatin, stirring to dissolve

Step 5:  Allow glaze to cool

Step 6: Spread a small amount of cooled glaze on the bottom of the pie

Step 7: Slice strawberries and layer in the pie shell.  Be generous, but don't overfill, or the glaze won't cover all of the berries, and the pie, while it'll still taste good, will be ugly.  Don't ask me how I know this.

Step 8: Pour the remaining glaze over the top of the berries.  Refrigerate and allow to "set", at least 30 minutes.  If it's a little soft, oh well, that's the price you pay for cutting it too soon.  Don't ask me how I know this, either. 

Step 9: Add whipped topping, either the real thing or the fake stuff that most of us still use, although we feel really really guilty about that.

If I'm serving this at home to family, I usually leave the topping off and add a big dollop to the top of each piece of pie as it's served.  If I'm making this for an occasion, I add a big dollop to the middle, so that when I bring it out everyone will ohh and ahh over it, or I spread it out all over.  

I love this pie.  Really. 

Tip: You can use 3 T of cornstarch instead of 4 T flour if you want a clearer glaze. Flour makes it a bit more cloudy, but I first started making it with flour because in my newly-wed kitchen it was what I had. 

Until next time, good cooking, and good eating!

This post is linked to:

Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm

Friday Favorites at Simply Sweet Home

Foodtastic Friday at Not Your Ordinary Recipes

Saturday Night Special at Funky Junk Interiors

Weekend Wrap-up Party at Tater Tots and Jello

Church Supper at Everyday Mom's Meals

Share Your Creativity at It's Overflowing

Sweet and Savory Sunday at Cooking for the Seven Dwarfs

Meatless Monday at My Sweet and Savory

Pillsbury Pie Crusts--Review, Recipes, and Giveaway

(This giveaway is now closed, thanks for entering!)

MyBlogSpark and Pillsbury have done it again with what I think is the best goodie box yet!


As part of a review/giveaway opportunity, I received a coupon for a free package of Pillsbury Pie Crusts, as well as all of the cute kitchen things pictured above--a glass pie plate, pot holder, cutting board, apple slicer, nested measuring cups, and apple-shaped kitchen timer.



Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts have to be one of the greatest commercial kitchen achievements since sliced bread! I grew up in a household where we made cakes and bought pies, and if it weren't for pre-made crusts I probably would have made very few pies in my lifetime! I've made exactly one "from scratch" pie crust in my adult life, and while it tasted fine, it definitely wasn't pretty! I love, love, love the ease and convenience of these crusts, and they taste, in my opinion, better than most frozen pie shells I've eaten.

Let me just show you some of the ways I've used Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts:

(click on the links to go the recipe posts)

During Purim in the spring, I've cut out circles of pie crust and made these little apple tarts known as Hamantaschen....

During berry season in the summertime I've used one as a bottom crust and cut the other into strips to make this Lattice Top Blackberry Pie...

...or pre-cooked the crust and filled it for this Chilled Blackberry Pie...

And last but certainly not least, made this beautiful full-of-spice-and-smells-of-fall custard style Navy Bean Pie.

This giveaway is now closed, thanks for your interest!

And now for the giveaway---thanks to Pillsbury and MyBlogSpark, one reader will recieve a package identical to the one I recieved. To enter, just leave your information on the giveaway form, and let me know what kind of pie you'd make with your Pillsbury Pie Crusts. The form will stay active until next Monday night, November 15, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. Central Time, and the winner will be chosen at random and notified via email.

Good luck!

Until next time, good cooking, and good eating!

(The opinion stated is that of my own.)

Sugar Free Sunday--Bean Pie

Welcome to this week's edition of Sugar Free Sunday!

My son has been requesting another navy bean pie, and since he's been eating sugar-free right along with me, he asked me to try a sugar free version.

After actually reading the Splenda bag last week and discovering that I needed to add 1/2 cup of powdered milk and 1/2 t baking powder for every 1 cup of Splenda that I substitute for sugar when making baked goods, I was ready to tackle another sugar-free challenge.

Ingredients:

• 1 c cooked navy beans (I used canned)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c evaporated milk
• 1/2 stick (1/4 c) butter
• 1 T flour
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 1/2 t cinnamon
• 1 c sugar Splenda
• 1/2 c powdered milk (added due to the Splenda substitution)
• 1/4 t baking powder (I wasn't sure if I would need this addition for a pie, so I used a little less than the 1/2 t recommended)

Put everything into a blender and process until well blended.

Pour into a single crust pie shell. (I used a refrigerated pie crust that you unroll, but you could use a frozen (thawed) crust, or one made from scratch.) The original recipe calls for baking at 350 for 50-60 minutes; I baked this one about 35-40 minutes and it was done.


I don't know how, but I messed this up a bit, I totally forgot to add the butter. So I actually made a pie that was both sugar-free and fat-free. So, instead of my pie looking like this:


(my first bean pie--the one with sugar and butter in it)

...it came out looking like this.

Just a bit disappointing? Another thing that's mentioned on the back of the Splenda package is that baked goods made with Splenda don't brown the same way as those made with sugar. You can lightly spray the top with cooking spray if you want the browning. I have a feeling that even having butter in the batter might have helped the looks of this!

As far as taste goes, it was okay--I think the butter would have really helped it--and the texture was just a bit dry. I will make this again, this time with the butter, and possibly lightly spraying the top, as well.

What sugar-free goodies have you made this week?

Until next time...

Freezer Cooking/Baking Day, Part 3

My baking day goals changed a bit from my initial plan. I was missing some key ingredients for a couple of items, but I decided to go ahead and make a pumpkin pie using some of the fresh pumpkin I cooked yesterday.

Doesn't it look pretty?

Not only did I make a pumpkin pie, I actually made my own pie crust. (pause for effect) From Scratch. (Longer pause, please)

Are you suitably impressed?

If you're a regular reader, you may recall I've blogged about making two different kinds of blackberry pie, and even a pie made from navy beans, but I have never--repeat, never--made a pie crust. Until today, that is.

Most pie crust recipes call for shortening, which is not something I regularly keep on hand, but after a quick shout-out on Twitter I found a recipe for Butter Pie Crust at the Natural Mommy, and decided to give it a try.

Now, before you go any further, you really do need to check out Natural Mommy's post with her pretty double crust pie; then come back here, and remember--no pies were harmed in making of this post.

But it is not a pretty sight.


Natural Mommy's recipe is for a double crust pie, so I cut the quantities in half--the amounts listed below are for a single crust pie.

Ingredients:

• 1 c plus 2 T flour
• slightly less than 1/2 t salt
• 1/3 c cold butter, cut in small pieces
• 4-5 T ice water
  

Mix together flour and salt, and cut in butter with a pastry blender

Add ice water a tablespoon at a time, stirring lightly with fork until the dough forms a ball

And this is where everything began to go Terribly Wrong.

Beth at the Natural Mommy recommends a pastry cloth and a rolling pin. I had neither, so I used my counter top and a wine bottle. (I promise, the bottle was already empty, I am not the culprit!) It was a really weird shape for a while, but I kept on until I got it semi-roundish.*

Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

Maybe just a bit better--at this point I put it in the fridge while I mixed the filling,

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 3/4 c pumpkin
• 1 c brown sugar
• 1/4 c white sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 1/2 t ground ginger
• (I didn't have ginger, I ended up using 2 t pumpkin pie spice instead of the individual spices)
• 1 can (1 3/4 c) evaporated milk

Mix all ingredients, and pour into your unbaked pie crust. I had a fairly deep 9 inch glass pie plate and it filled it completely. (If I were using premade crusts in the little aluminum tins, it may have filled two.)

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes; turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 45 minutes, or until the center is set.

Serve with whipped topping of your choice----want a bite?

This was a good pie--it needed just a little more of something; maybe a little extra nutmeg, or little more pumpkin pie spice. And I admit it--the crust was tough. Not your fault, Natural Mommy, I think I worked it to death trying to get it round. *At one point I balled it all up and started over. Yes, I know that was a Big Mistake. Don't laugh.

But...

My husband was tickled to death (southern expression alert!) he loves pumpkin pie and he never gets pumpkin pie at home. Well, I did make one once with a bought crust and can of pumpkin pie filling, but I'm not sure that counts...

One pie is not a lot for a baking day, but I was so extraordinarily proud of myself for making the entire thing from scratch, from cooking the pumpkin to making the pie crust. After all, I'm the gal with "quick and easy" in the title of every recipe!

This post is linked to:

Holiday Food Fest at Hoosier Homemade

Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum

Recipe Swap at The Grocery Cart Challenge

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace

DIY at A Soft Place to Land

Until next time, good cooking, and good eating!

You'll Never Guess What's in This Pie

I'm bringing back an earlier post to link to Love the Pie at Tidy Mom--thanks for visiting!


We have a saying in my family, dating from when my grandmother was alive. "You'll neeevvver guess...(who I saw today; what I had for lunch; who called me;) (fill in the the blank).

Well, I made a new pie this weekend--one I've never eaten or seen before, and had never even heard of it until recently. I was a bit skeptical about it, right up until I smelled it and tasted it.

And you'll neeevvvver guess what's in it.....

Navy beans!

You read that right. And it's a sweet pie; light and custard-y and smelling of the best fall and holiday spices. And guess what else I found? Navy beans aren't the only beans you can make into pies. I found recipes for pinto beans pies and Great Northern bean pies, too. Some of them are made similar to pecan pie, with beans substituting for nuts; others are made of mashed beans; but if navy bean pie is any indication of what the others will taste like, I can't wait to try them, too!

My first task in my journey to bean pie was finding navy beans with a minimum of seasonings. Believe me, for a sweet pie you don't want beans flavored with salt pork or bacon. I thought I was going to have to cook dry beans, but I finally found a canned variety that had only salt and water as an added ingredient. Even so I drained and rinsed them well before I used them.

Ingredients:

• 1 c cooked navy beans
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c evaporated milk
• 1/2 stick (1/4 c) butter
• 1 T flour
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 1/2 t cinnamon
• 1 c sugar
• crust for a single crust pie

I started with my favorite pie crust--Pillsbury Ready Crust, found in the refrigerated section--let it sit out for about 15 minutes it will unroll better, then place in your pie dish.

Place the beans, butter (the recipe didn't say melted, so I just cut mine in small chunks), eggs, milk, and seasonings in the blender and blend.

The recipe I used then stated to pour into a mixing bowl before adding the sugar, but I didn't see the point of dirtying up another dish, so I just added it to the mixture in the blender and blended it all together for a few seconds, then hit pulse once or twice or three times for good measure.

Pour into your uncooked pie crust. At this point, it smells (and tastes!) a little like eggnog--and what's not to like about that??

Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. I set my timer first for about 50 minutes--it was beautifully browned and pretty by then, but I could tell the middle wasn't set, so it for me it did take pretty much the whole hour to bake.

Doesn't it look pretty? And trust me, it smells so good---it shouts fall and holidays and all the good smells of baking, all rolled into one.

I did wait for it to cool well before cutting into it, but it was hard!

If I had never tried this for myself, I don't know if I would have ever believed it, but now that I've smelled and tasted of navy bean pie, I think I'll try some of the others, too!

For more recipes, please see the links at:

Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace

Tuesday at the Table at All the Small Stuff

The Ultimate Recipe Swap at Life as Mom

Foodie Friday at Desgins by Gollum

Until next time, good cooking, and good eating!

Blackberry Bounty 2--Chilled Blackberry Pie

As I mentioned in my last post, my honey brought home lots and lots of handpicked blackberries. The first pie that I made turned out really well, but I wanted to try something different for the second one. This recipe is similar to a fresh strawberry pie that I make occasionally, although not often enough!


Ingredients:

• 3/4 c sugar
• 3 T cornstarch
• 1 1/2 c water
• 1 pkg blackberry jello (not pictured)
• 3 c blackberries
• 1 single crust pie crust

As in the previous post, I used my favorite pie crust recipe--refrigerated ready crust (!). Place crust in pie plate, and prick with fork--this keeps the crust from puffing up where it isn't suppose to.

Bake at 400 degrees until lightly browned. Not quite this brown.

While the crust is cooling, mix together sugar, cornstarch, and water. Cook on medium high heat until translucent to clear. Add jello, stir until dissolved. I couldn't find blackberry jello, so I used blackberry/raspberry fusion.

Allow the cooked mixture to cool slightly but not set, stir in blackberries, then pour into baked pie crust.

Refrigerate and allow to set for at least 30 minutes. As you can see, this one held together very well! Top with whipped topping and enjoy!

I didn't like this pie quite as well the first one--part of it may have been the jello--I'm not a big fan of raspberry flavored anything, so I thought the gel filling had a whang that wasn't to my personal liking. I also thought it was bit stiff or sticky--I should have remembered that when I make my strawberry pie, I don't use a whole box of strawberry jello as most recipes call for, I use only about 2 or 3 tablespoons. My husband thought it was a bit "seedier" than the other one, which is to be expected since the berries aren't actually cooked in this one.

Verdict: I would make this again if I could find blackberry or even blueberry jello, I just don't like the raspberry, even mixed with other flavors, and I would add only about 3 T of the jello powder, not the whole box.

This post is shared at:

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace

Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam

Foodie Friday at Desgins by Gollum

Recipe Swap at the Grocery Cart Challenge

Click over and fined links to other recipes, and see what's cooking around the blogosphere.

Stay tuned for the easy blackberry jam I made!

Until next time, good cooking and good eating!

Blackberry Bounty--Pie a la Mode

My sweet husband has come home from work three days this week with fresh blackberries, picked from wild berry patches growing out around his job site. He stayed late in the heat and picked berries, braving not just the heat but the chiggers and brambles, and brought us home quarts and quarts of beautiful fresh ripe berries. All he requested was a cobbler "like his grandma used to make" with two crusts.

Now you have to understand, I don't do pie. I do make really good peach or pear cobbler, but those involve making a batter that cooks into a thick, almost cake-like top, nothing like the traditional pie crust style cobbler. So I searched out and found this recipe for blackberry pie and decided to try it.

As you can see, I used my trusty regular pie crust recipe--Pillsbury Ready Crust(!)

The other ingredients are:

• 3 cups fresh blackberries
• 1 c sugar
• 3 T corn starch
• 2 T butter

The directions stated to put the berries in the bottom crust, then sprinkle with sugar and corn starch and dot with butter.

The top crust I cut in strips and latticed-it---you real pie bakers out there just be quiet, I was really impressed with myself! Then I sprinkled just a little more sugar on top so it would have pretty little sugar crystals on top. I baked it about 35 minutes at 350 degrees.



This is what it looked like after it came out of the oven--my son even said, "Wow, mom, it looks like a real pie!" I was so excited, I could hardly wait for it cool off enough to cut into it.

Unfortunately, we had to eat it out of a bowl instead of on a plate! It tasted good, anyway--not too sweet, but just sweet enough, especially with vanilla ice cream on top!

If I make this again (and I probably will) I'd gently toss the berries with the corn starch and sugar, not put the corn starch on top. Besides not thickening enough, I had a couple of clumps of cornstarch right underneath the top crust that never dissolved. I might even increase the amount of corn starch by another tablespoon.

Verdict--this one's keeper!

Stay tuned this next week, I'll be sharing even more blackberry bounty recipes as I go!

This post is being shared at:

Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum

Finer Things Friday at The Finer Things in Life

Recipe Swap at The Grocery Cart Challenge

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace

Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam

Until next time, good cooking, and good eating!