Strawberry Pie

 

This is a very simple recipe that showcases fresh strawberries.  If you use a store-bought frozen pie crust, it's even easier to make.  I made one change based on suggestions in the recipe comments: I reduced the amount of water to 1/2 cup. The filling was still a little loose but that didn't take away from the delicious taste! Whipped cream is optional but oh-so-good!  Feel free to whip your own cream, use whipped topping or whipped cream in a can. Recipe is from AllRecipes.

 

1 quart fresh strawberries, hulled

1 (9 inch) pie crust, baked

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

¾ cup water

½ cup heavy whipping cream (optional)

 

If using a frozen pie crust, bake according to directions.

Wash and hull strawberries. 

 

Arrange half the strawberries in the pre-baked pastry shell.

 

 

Place remaining strawberries in a saucepan.  Add sugar and bring to a boil.

 

 

Whisk cornstarch and water together in a small bowl.  Add to pan and stir constantly until mixture has thickened.

 

 

Pour cooked strawberry mixture over berries in pie shell.  Chill for at least three hours.

 

 

Top with whipped cream if desired and serve.

 It's Here!

Cover reveal!  A Berry Suspicious Death is now up for pre-order!

Coming August 20 

    AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE    

 

Weddings are murder in the new Cranberry Cove Mystery from USA Today bestselling author Peg Cochran!

The cranberry bogs at Sassamanash Farms have never looked more festive than when Monica’s half-brother celebrates his wedding there. It’s a genuinely joyous occasion, and even greeting a strange assortment of guests and witnessing a heated argument can’t spoil Monica’s mood. But that all changes when one of the guests is found murdered at the reception—and then one of Monica’s employees is accused of doing the deed to get his hands on the dead woman’s money.

It doesn’t take long for Monica to discover that the victim had amassed her fortune by marrying a very wealthy—and very ill—older man. What’s more, the old man’s daughters despised the scheming, gold-digging woman, and thought the inheritance money should have been theirs. That seems like motive enough for murder, but Monica suspects there’s more to this case than simple greed. With her employee in hot water and time running out, Monica will have to act fast to catch the killer, before a case that started with a family wedding ends with her own funeral . ..

 

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Mini Fruit Pies and Hand Pies #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

 Libby Klein Summer is fruit pie season! Whether you're celebrating Independence Day or at a family reunion picnic, what makes a better dessert than fruit pie? So many lovely fruits to choose from this time of year. I couldn't decide which one I like the best so I made five kinds. You'll need a mini pie pan like I have, or you can make hand pies like the kind that come individually wrapped in the convenience store.

Disclaimer - Read all your labels to make sure your ingredients are gluten-free. Gluten can be sneaky.

Mini Fruit Pies and Hand Pies

Serves: 6

 

Flaky Gluten-Free Pie Crust

Ingredients:

3 cups one-to-one Gluten-Free blend (or all-purpose flour)
1 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 cups good butter, cold
1 egg
1 TBSP neutral vinegar
1/3 cup ice water

Directions:

Blitz your flour and salt in the bowl of your food processor. Add your butter in cubes and blitz until the mixture is crumbly. Beat your egg and vinegar together. Blitz into the crumbly dough. Add your ice water in small amounts with the food processor on and watch the dough come together. Only add enough water to make a cohesive pastry dough. You don't want it too dry, but you should be able to pat it into a ball and flatten it to a disc pretty easily. Wrap the disk in plastic wrap and chill while you make the fillings. 

Fruit Fillings

Ingredients:

Either 

4 cups Strawberries, 

or 4 cups Blackberries, 

or 4 cups Peaches, peeled and sliced with a teaspoon of nutmeg

or 4 cups Blueberries with a pinch of mace

or a combination of the above

AND

1 cup sugar

3 Tbsp cornstarch

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Additional ingredients if you're making the hand pies.

1 egg for an egg wash pre-baking

1 cup confectioners sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1-2 Tbsp water

Directions:

Place 4 cups of the fruit of your choice in a saucepan. You can see that I like to add a little spice depending on the fruit. Add the sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice. Cook on low until the fruit has rendered its juices and the mixture comes to a boil. Cook for a couple of minutes until the fruit mixture thickens. If you are using peaches, cook a couple minutes longer until they soften a bit. You just made pie filling. Set it aside to cool. What you don't bake in a crust you can use to top ice cream waffles, pancakes, etc.

  

Roll out your pastry dough and either cut into rounds for mini-pies
or cut to fit in your pie plate. 

Mini Pies

If you're using a pie plate for mini-pies, you'll want to blind back the shell. Prick with a fork or use pie weights and bake the shell at 350 degrees for twenty minutes. Then fill each shell with your pie filling and pop back in the oven for another 20 minutes. The filling will get all bubbly and the edges of your pie crust will brown. Remove from the oven and let cool before serving.

Hand Pies

If you're making min-pies like I did here, just be sure not to roll the dough too thick. These small hand pies don't hold a lot of filling and you don't want them to be pop-tarts. At least not today.

Transfer your rounds to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Top each one with a spoonful of pie filling just in the middle. Run the rolling pin over the next cut-out to make it slightly larger than the bottom. Stretch it over the fruit filling and crimp the edges together. 

Beat that extra egg with 1 TBSP water to make an egg wash. Brush over the top crust of the hand pies. Bake at 350 degrees for twenty minutes or until your crust is golden brown. 

When cool, make your vanilla glaze by mixing together the confectioners sugar with the vanilla and just enough water to make a smooth and slightly runny icing. Place your hand pies on a baker's rack over sheets of parchment paper or foil. Spoon the finished glaze over your hand pies. The glaze will coat the top of the pies and set to a nice finish.

 Poppy McAllister discovers that gluten-free Halloweens can scare up another case of murder in the latest installment of this delightful culinary B&B mystery series! - Kirkus Reviews

Poppy is none too pleased when her B&B is coerced into participating in the Cape May Haunted Dinners Tour during Halloween season. Though her knack for finding dead bodies has given the place a spooky reputation, the Murder House is a completely undeserved nickname. At least it used to be . . .
 
While Poppy wrangles with some guests who can’t stop squabbling with each other—including a paranormal researcher, a very quirky pet psychic who freaks out her portly Persian, and an undercover tabloid reporter eager to catch her staff in a lie—one of them winds up facedown in a plate of tiramisu. And now she has bigger worries than getting her house TP’d . . .
 
Includes Recipes from Poppy’s Kitchen!
 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/

Piled High Strawberry Pie

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that there are pie recipes in The Diva Sweetens the Pie. I tried to steer clear of the usual pies, like lemon meringue and cherry, just because most people have tried and true recipes for those that they love. The book contains one cool recipe for pie crust that I love. It's made with frozen butter! Other than that, though, I went with different crumb crust type recipes because they're so easy and sometimes, they really elevate the flavors of the pie.

We ate this strawberry pie a lot last summer. It's a combination of cooked strawberries and raw strawberries, which gives it such a fresh flavor.

Piled High Strawberry Pie

1 8-inch pie pan

Graham Cracker Crust

9 sheets honey graham crackers
4 tablespoon butter

Pie Filling

2 pounds strawberries
1 cup sugar
5 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/4 cups water
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350.

Melt the butter. Pulse the graham crackers in a food processor until they are fine crumbs. With the food processor running, pour in the butter. Press into the pie pan with your fingers. Bake 8 - 12 minutes.

Wash the strawberries, hull, and cut into quarters lengthwise. Place two cups of the strawberries in a heavy-bottomed pot, add the sugar, and mash with a potato masher, leaving some clumps of strawberry. Add the cornstarch and mix until dissolved. Stir in the water and lemon juice and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook at a simmer (you may need to turn the heat down a bit) and cook until it thickens and turns red, approximately 2 minutes.

Pour enough of the uncooked strawberries into the prepared pie pan to cover the bottom in a single layer. They should not be perfectly arranged. Some should be turned up and others down. Ladle 1/3 of the hot strawberries over them. Add another layer of the uncooked strawberries, mounding them toward the center. Ladle another 1/3 of the cooked strawberries over them. Add the remaining strawberries, heaping them toward the middle. Ladle the remaining hot strawberries over top, slowly. (If you pour too fast it may overflow.) Try to cover all the bare strawberries.

Refrigerate until set. Serve with sweetened whipped cream. If you're feeling festive, pipe the whipped cream around the edge for a knockout appearance.

Sweetened Whipped Cream

1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Beat the cream until it begins to hold a shape. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and beat.

Easy graham cracker crust. This is the only baking required!

Yum! Fresh strawberries. Note that they are cut lengthwise.

Cook until the strawberries and juices turn red.

Pile on the fresh strawberries and pour the cooked ones over them.

So pretty with whipped cream.

Leave a comment to enter to win a copy of The Diva Sweetens the Pie. Remember to leave your email address so I can find you if you win!

RETRO WEEK FOR MOM'S DAY! #Recipe Strawberry Pie @PegCochran

by Peg Cochran

Welcome to Retro Week!  We thought it would be fun to take a look back at some of the old recipes that were popular "in the day."  I imagine many of our mothers found their recipes on the backs of product boxes or in magazines like Good Housekeeping.  Recipes from famous restaurants were also big judging by my mother-in-law's collection.  Of course your mother may be younger than mine--I'm thinking back to the 50s and 60s when TV characters like Donna Reed cooked in a dress, pearls and high heels.

We hope you'll enjoy the week, and we'd love to hear about some of the "old" recipes your mother or grandmother cooks which have been passed down to you.

I made my mother-in-law's strawberry pie--super simple for the busy housewife (although potentially a little messy if you're wearing a dress and pearls.)  The recipe is written out on one of those "From the Kitchen of" type index cards which were popular before computers and pinterest and food blogs. My mother had a little box she kept hers in.  The directions were a little sketchy so I had to text my sister-in-law to see if she remembered more than I did.  The pie is quite sweet so I served it topped with a dab of sour cream which set it off very nicely.

Ingredients:
1 pre-baked pie shell (I cheated and used store bought--your choice)
16 ounce container ripe strawberries
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
3 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup cold water

Place 1/2 cup of the berries (sliced), the cup of water and sugar in a pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes.

Dissolve the cornstarch in half cup of water and add to berry mixture.  Stir and cook for 3 to 5 minutes until mixture thickens.  A strawberry colored "gel" will form.  Let cool.

Add remainder of berries (I sliced mine, but my sister-in-law said it makes a prettier presentation if you use whole berries--cut jumbo ones in half.)  Pour into pie shell and cool in the refrigerator for a few hours. Garnish with whipped cream or sour cream.

Fresh strawberries -- yum!

Strawberries cooking in sugar and water

Strawberries/sugar/water/cornstarch turned into a "gel"

In the pie shell--next time I'll leave the berries whole for a prettier pie!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

If you want to see a hilarious take on those old cookbooks and recipe check out the Gallery of Regrettable Foods!

FIVE GREAT COZIES - FOUR GREAT AUTHORS - $.99!!!

Available at Amazon and all ebook retailers

And at the end of Confession Is Murder, you'll find two teaser chapters for Berried Secrets from my upcoming Cranberry Cove series!

Strawberry Pie is always a Favorite

From Daryl aka Avery

AND THE WINNER IS...for Sunday's giveaway from Nancy Parra...

Ronna L.  

Ronna, Nancy will be in contact.

Congrats!!!

And now...

It's still strawberry season. How can you pass them up? I can't. Ever. I eat them every day of the week during the season. Love them. So sweet, so simple. So red. We have the best place, just around the corner, that sells fresh strawberries from April to September. 

Recently, I bought a three-pack. That's a ton of strawberries! 

Note: strawberries turn quickly, so if you're not going to use them right away, make sure you either hull them and/or put them on paper towels to keep the moisture at bay. 

Strawberries, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

In cream, in strawberry ice cream, and most of all...in strawberry pie. Yum! 

I've made this pie using a gluten-free crust, but it can be made using a regular flour crust, too. The strawberry mixture, itself, is naturally gluten-free. I found the recipe in a cookbook called The How Can it be Gluten-free Cookbook. [You know how I love cookbooks, right?] This one has just about every tip in it about how to make gluten-free items. From biscuits to desserts! I've included the recipe for the cookbook's pie dough below. I added a few notes of my own.

Enjoy!

STRAWBERRY PIE

ala The How Can it Be Gluten-free Cookbook

Ingredients:

1 recipe single-crust pie dough (fresh made or frozen)

3 pounds strawberries (9 cups) – 5 containers (the more the merrier!!!! )

3/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 ½ teaspoons fruit pectin

A pinch of salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:

Make the pie crust (recipe below). Cook it at 375 degrees (middle rack) for 20-25 minutes. Rotate at about 12 minutes so it cooks evently. Note: in my oven, it took 20 minutes because it happens to run hot! Do your best not to overcook. Should be golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool.

In the meantime, choose 1 container of strawberries that are ugly, out of shape, etc. (about 1 ½ cups, uncut) and process in a food processor or blender. It will make about 3/4 cup puree.

Now whisk the sugar, cornstarch, pectin, and salt together in a medium saucepan. Stir in the berry puree. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a spatula, and bring to a full boil. Cook for 2 minutes scraping bottom and sides of pan to prevent overcooking. The mixture will froth at first and then will darken and thicken. DO NOT OVERCOOK.  Transfer this glaze to a large bowl and stir in lemon juice. Let cool to room temperature (about 15 minutes).

Meanwhile, pick over the rest of the strawberries, cutting and slicing those that are too big or possibly “ugly.” Add the strawberries to the bowl containing the glaze and fold in with the spatula until coated.  Pour the strawberry mixture into the pie shell, mounding toward the center. If any strawberry sides face up, turn downward so they look pretty.

Refrigerate the pie until chilled, about 2 hours. Serve with whipped cream if desired.

SINGLE-CRUST GLUTEN-FREE DOUGH

ala The How Can it Be Gluten-free Cookbook

Ingredients:

2 ½ tablespoons ice water

1 ½ tablespoons sour cream

1 ½ teaspoons rice vinegar

¾ cup plus 2/3 cup gluten-free flour

1 ½ teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon xanthan gum

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces (cold from refrigerator)

Directions:

Combine ice water, sour cream, and vinegar in a bowl. Process flour, sugar, salt and xanthan gum in a food processor until combined, about 5 seconds. Scatter butter on the mixture and pulse until butter is size of large peas, about 10 pulses.

Pour half of the sour cream mixture over the flour and pulse until incoprorated, about 3 pulses. Pour remaining sour cream mixture over flour and pulse until comes together, about 6 pulses.

Turn dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap (make sure it’s large enough for a pie plate) and flatten the dough into a 5-inch disk. Wrap in plastic and refrierate for one hour. Before rolling out dough, let it sit on the counter to soften sligthly, about 15 minutes.

*MY TRICK: I topped the dough with another sheet of saran wrap so that the dough did not stick to the rolling pin! (That is not in the cookbook recipe.)

*Dough can be wrapped tightly and refrigerated for up to 2 days.

By the way, you'll notice in the photo, yes, the crust got a little "toasted." I'd cook it slightly less than recommended next time. [The old adage: know your oven.] Also, this pie would have been much prettier with whipped cream. I ran out and didn't think a small spritz would do it justice. It was delicious without!

TWO MORE THINGS:

On Killer Characters blog, which a number of us participate on, we are having the Cozy Days of Summer Giveaway, where each day you can enter to win a book or more. Check it out and leave a comment with your email! Click the picture to follow the link:

ALSO

For STIRRING THE PLOT, which comes out September 30th, I'm going to be doing a number of giveaways. Books, mugs, stuffed kittens!  Make sure you're signed up for my newsletter and "like" me on Facebook, where information about the giveaways will appear.  Look for pictures of Tigger, the ginger cat in the series, celebrating ala Halloween!

******************

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