It’s PIE time! Hooray 🙂 🙂 🙂
20 minute strawberry pie to be exact! This week feels all fall like and gloomy here! It came out of nowhere! (and I don’t think it’s here to stay just yet …. 🙁 )
Last week at the farmer’s market, Preston and I could smell the amazing scent of super ripe strawberries wafting across the parking lot before we even hit the market. I had to grab three baskets because the smell and the price were too good to pass up. But they were ripe and had to be eaten immediately.
So, a huge fresh strawberry pie happened! I was planning to just freeze them, then thought of baking them, and Preston thought pie.
The beauty about this pie (okay, one of many) is that it’s so simple. I prepped it in the morning before work, came home to assemble it, and threw it in the oven while I made dinner. It was only about 20 minutes of prep time. That includes making my own pie dough! (Because I did it in the food processor!)
So I had to snap a few pictures and share with all of you!
I don’t know the last time I had such a quick turnaround between planning a recipe, executing, and getting a post up!
- 6 C fresh strawberries, stemmed and quartered
- 3/4 C granulated sugar
- 1/2 C cornstarch
- 2 vanilla beans, seeds scraped out
- 2 1/2 C all-purpose flour (I ran out and used a small amount of whole grain flour)
- 1 C butter or vegetable shortening
- 1 T sugar
- 1 t salt
- ice water (as needed)
- juice of 1 lemon
- extra cornstarch (as needed)
- Combine quartered strawberry pieces, vanilla beans, sugar, and cornstarch in a container and refrigerate until you’re ready to bake. Letting the sugar stay on the strawberries for awhile (a workday for me, maybe overnight or a few hours for you?) will make the juices run, so if there is loose juice at the bottom of the tupperware before you bake it, add more cornstarch until it soaks up the extra juices and lightly but visibly coats the fruit. (It seemed like WAY too much to me, but I decided to test it and it made for an AWESOME texture of filling.) Add the lemon juice before baking as well.
- Combine flour, salt, sugar, and butter cut into small cubes, all into a food processor. Pulse until you can see the butter cut into pieces no larger than a pea (but not much smaller, either! Butter chunks are great for the flakiest pie crust.)
- Slowly drizzle in ice cold water until the dough starts to pull away from the bowl of the food processor (you know, until it makes that scary thudding sound 😉 )
- Remove the dough and pile everything onto either a pastry slab or a cutting board sprinkled with flour. Using your hands, work the dough together until it holds in a ball. Divide into two balls. Roll them both out.
- When I prepped my pie, I placed one dough in the bottom of my pie dish, and wrapped the other in wax paper and refrigerated it so it was ready for me to bake.
- Fill the bottom dough with the strawberry mixture. Place the top dough on top – whole, lattice-style, with cookie cutter shapes, whatever you prefer!
- Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.
My 20 minute strawberry pie is the absolute perfect dessert to say goodbye to summer and get ready for fall! Summer berries in a warming pie.
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