This weekend when John’s parents came to visit, his mother helped me make a strawberry pie. We were talking while we baked, and somehow I forgot to take a single picture of it.
Once it came out of the oven and we cut it, it vanished.
It was that good.
So the next day Daniel and I set out to make another pie. I wanted to make another strawberry pie, but Daniel had other ideas. He wanted to use both strawberries and blueberries.
Two kinds of berries in one pie? Outrageous! Still, I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. It’s not as if we were adding broccoli and bananas to cereal.
So we made our dough.
We rolled it out. (I usually roll it between pieces wax paper, but all I had was parchment paper, so that’s what we used.)
Daniel pressed the crust into the pie plate.
Then we cored and sliced our strawberries, added a few handfuls of blueberries, and sugared them.
I slipped a little vanilla into the bowl, and Daniel argued for adding lemonade over lemon juice. Again I found myself agreeing to his request.
We are such risk takers.
Isn’t it lovely?
The crust always looks like a state or a country. This one reminded us of China before we put it into the pan.
Then we covered the berries with a top crust, sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on top, and our pie went into the oven.
But our work was not done. It was then that we started on our second pie, the one Leo had requested. He is not a berry fan, but he loves pie crust. So we made him what we called an “air pie.”
I rolled out the leftover crust, pressed it into a baking dish, brushed it with milk, dusted it with cinnamon sugar, and slid it into the oven.
I kept checking it, but it took as long to cook as the berry-filled pie. And soon enough we had both pies–berry and air–cooling in the kitchen.
The verdict?
The strawberry and blueberry blend is quite tasty–and even better than that with some whipped cream.
My favorite was the straight strawberry pie we had the day before, but our double-berry pie was a fun experiment, and it really did taste like summer.
As for the air pie, Leo said, “I sort of like it and I sort of don’t like it.”
He was disappointed that I made an open-faced version. He was hoping for two crusts with air in between.
Well, not every pie can be a dainty dish to set before the king.
Here’s the recipe:
Pie Crust
3 cups flour
¾ cup canola oil
2 tsp. vinegar (I use apple cider, but white also works fine)
5-6 Tbsp. iced water
Sift flour into bowl. Combine oil, vinegar, and water. Add to flour and quickly stir. You may need to mix it with your hands to form it into a ball. Divide dough into two balls. Place each ball between two sheets of waxed paper to roll out. Remove wax paper to place in the pan.
This recipe comes from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.
Pie Filling
Add to 4 cups of berries (we used 3 cups of strawberries (which we sliced) and 1 cup of blueberries):
3 Tbsp. flour
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
(I skip the tablespoon of butter that the cookbook calls for.)
Bake at 425 for 10 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 350 and bake for 30 to 40 more minutes until the crust is browned.
Enjoy!
Linking up today with Try a New Recipe Tuesday at Home to 4 Kiddos.