recipe: strawberry pie

When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmmm, boy. -Jack Handey

We bought a big carton of fresh strawberries over the weekend, and I thought I'd take a stab at making a pie. (Not my prettiest creation, as you can see from the photo, but it certainly is tasty!)

For the crust:
1-1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

Mix all of the ingredients together and spread evenly into a pie dish -- on the bottom and up the sides. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 12-15 minutes.

For the filling:
1 quart fresh strawberries, washed and sliced
1/2 cup sugar*
3 tbsp cornstarch
3/4 cup water

Arrange half of strawberries in baked crust. Mash remaining berries and combine with sugar in a saucepan. Place saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and water. Gradually stir cornstarch mixture into boiling strawberry mixture. Reduce heat and simmer mixture until thickened, about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour mixture over berries in pastry shell. Chill for several hours before serving.

*The original recipe from All Recipes online calls for 1 cup sugar, which I thought was too sweet. I'd cut this to 1/2 cup to get a bit of the strawberries' mild tartness.

(Crust recipe from The Joy of Cooking, Filling recipe adapted from All Recipes online.)



And here's who I get to look at whenever I'm doing anything in the kitchen. Our little Lulu always hoping to catch a dropped crumb...