Summertime Strawberry Pie

Since holding my vintage picnic party I've had a number of recipe requests. They will all be going up on Diamond Dame and will also be wrapped up in a larger article with all the tips and how-to for throwing your own vintage picnic, but in the meantime I'll get the Strawberry Pie recipe online as it's strawberry season here in NZ and this pie is just about the best thing that can happen to a strawberry!

I should also mention this is my mother's recipe and was a favourite of mine as a child.

STRAWBERRY PIE

Ingredients
store-bought sweet shortcrust pastry, or

make your own pastry from 1 cup flour, 1/4lb butter and up to 1/4 cup cold water

250g cream cheese (the full strength stuff, not 'lite' - for heaven's sake live a little!)

250 ml whipping cream

1 cup icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Lots of ripe strawberries (2-3 punnets, I always err on the side of 'too many')

1-2 tbsp sugar

cornstarch or gelatin for thickening

Method

1. Pastry

Either roll out the store bought pastry or make your own by following a basic recipe off the internet or combining the pastry ingredients above to make a pastry dough (keep the butter cold - cut it into small pieces and then work it into the flour with your hands until it looks like breadcrumbs, then add a tiny amount of water at a time until you get a doughy consistency)

Grease and flour a pie plate (I use a 9.5"/24cm pyrex one) and line with the pastry. Trim any excess away around the rim.

Prick it all over with a fork and bake blind at 350 F (180 C) until light tan. Remove and let it go completely cold. (For blind baking it can be helpful to put baking paper overtop of the pastry and fill with rice or baking beads to stops the pastry from 'poofing up' while cooking. I often don't bother and just keep and eye on it and prick any poofy bits with a fork during cooking).

2. Filling

Let the cream cheese soften in a bowl. Mix in the icing sugar - I do this by 'creaming' it with the back of a fork until it's thoroughly combined and quite fluffy/squishy.

In another bowl, whip the cream until quite thick but not overly stiff. Add vanilla and blend briefly to incorporate.

Now you need to combine the whipped cream with the cream cheese. You can do this by hand with a wooden spoon - it's hard to get the substances to 'blend' so you end up with a more rustic mixture.

Or, you can slowly add the cream cheese to the whipping cream while blending with a hand mixer. This is what I did last time and it worked pretty well, you just have to be careful to do it fairly gently and not overblend it into a soup.

Pour the above concoction (it should be quite thick) into the baked and cooled pie shell and smooth out with a spoon. It will not completely fill the pie case because we have to leave room for the topping! Put in the fridge to set.

3. Topping

Wash, hull and thinly slice the strawberries. When the pie filling has set (gone quite stiff) cover the top of the pie with a generous layer of sliced strawberries. You can do this randomly for the 'rustic' look, or you can attempt a variety of pretty concentric circle or swirl designs.

Reserve a handful of strawberries and put in a small saucepan on medium-low heat and cook until they melt into strawberry goo (I help the process along by mashing then with a fork once they get soft). Add a bit of water to thin, and sugar to taste. I actually used a dollop of cream last time instead of water which tasted nice but made it a slightly funny looking cloudy colour.

Add either a bit of cornstarch or gelatin and stir until completely dissolved. Remove from the heat, decant into a chilled bowl and let it cool down without setting. When cool, pour it all over the top of the pie. Sometimes I'll bang the pie dish and wiggle it to help the goo go into all the crevices. Put in fridge to fully set.

Serve slightly chilled. At my picnic it was out of the fridge for a couple of hours and softened up quite a bit but was still edible and delicious.

It's really a sort of strawberry cheesecake, and the astute among you will have already figured out that you could top it with things other than strawberries: raspberries, blueberries, kiwi, or even lemon curd. But for me there's something so incredibly classic about the strawberry/cream combination that I can't bring myself to make it any other way.