Classic Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

 

This is the best pie I've ever tasted.  I remember the first time I ever tasted it, a coworker had brought it in to work to share.  How generous, knowing now how good it is I would have kept the whole thing to myself.  But from that moment on I persistently nagged him for about a month straight until he finally got sick of hearing me, or really wanted some more strawberry rhubarb pie, and sent the recipe my way.  

Never having much pie success in the past, or more specifically pie crust success, I decided I was going to give this pie my all and make it for Greg's birthday.  That was two years ago and I have since recreated this pie numerous times.  This pie is like the security blanket you keep with you no matter where you go.  It's like a trusty friend who you know will never let you down.  What I'm trying to say is, use this recipe when you don't want to stress about the outcome, because even when it's bad, it's still good!  

So naturally, when we decided to have friends over last night, I settled on burgers, oven baked potato wedges, and my best friend, strawberry rhubarb pie.

Since those first attempts at making the perfect pie crust, I have learned several secrets that make success a bit more certain.  Granted, I still have my days when, for the life of me, I cannot get the crust to turn out (I think sometimes it has to do with humidity and things like that, that's what I tell myself anyway), but here are a couple tricks that seem to help:

1. Cold ingredients, even frozen!  Putting everything in the freezer prior to mixing (even your flour!) is a good start to making the perfect, buttery, flaky crust.

2. Don't mess with the dough too much.  It is perfectly acceptable to see bits of butter and shortening throughout your dough.  These will eventually melt into beautiful bites of flaky goodness. 

3.  Use a food processor or stand mixer to make your crust.  They are quick, hence your ingredients remain cold.

With these few tricks up your sleeve, let's get started.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

recipe can be found on Epicurious

Ingredients:

For crust 

3 cups all purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup chilled solid vegetable shortening, cut into pieces

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

10 tablespoons (about) ice water

For filling
3 1/2 cups 1/2-inch-thick slices trimmed rhubarb (1 1/2 pounds untrimmed) I couldn't find fresh so I used frozen and it worked fine
1 16-ounce container strawberries, hulled, halved (about 3 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg yolk beaten to blend with 1 teaspoon water (for glaze)

Make crust:
Combine flour, sugar and salt in processor. Using on/off turns, cut in shortening and butter until coarse meal forms. 

 

What, doesn't everyone have a shelf in their freezer filled with chunks of butter and shortening?

Blend in enough ice water 2 tablespoons at a time to form moist clumps. Gather dough into ball; cut in half. Flatten each half into disk. Wrap separately in plastic; refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled. Let dough soften slightly at room temperature before rolling.) 

 

Make filling:
Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine first 7 ingredients in large bowl. Toss gently to blend. 

 

Roll out 1 dough disk on floured work surface to 13-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish.   

 

Trick: Drape your crust over your rolling pin to prevent tears.

Trim excess dough, leaving 3/4-inch overhang.

Roll out second dough disk on lightly floured surface to 13-inch round. Cut into fourteen 1/2-inch-wide strips.  I use a pizza cutter but a regular knife would work too. 

Spoon filling into crust. Now comes the tricky part, making the lattice top.  Here is a YouTube video showing how to do it, once you see how it's done, you will find it isn't really that bad.  If you are still nervous about trying it on your actual pie, you can practice with strips of paper first.  Arrange 7 dough strips atop filling, spacing evenly. 

 

Trick: Use every other strip so that you will still have the correct lengths to go the other way.

Form lattice by placing remaining dough strips in opposite direction atop filling. Trim ends of dough strips even with overhang of bottom crust. Fold strip ends and overhang under, pressing to seal. Crimp edges decoratively. 

 

Brush glaze over crust. transfer pie to baking sheet. 

 

This is why you put your pie on a baking sheet!

Bake 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F. Bake pie until golden and filling thickens, about 1 hour 25 minutes. Transfer pie to rack and cool completely.

Enjoy with someone you love!

Happy Birthday Mark & Helene!

Easter weekend was wonderful this year! It was our first time hosting the entire family (us two, Mark & Helene, Mom & Dad) over a holiday weekend. It was great having everyone together again, we hadn't seen M & H since our wedding week! Another added bonus of having everyone together was getting to celebrate M & H's birthdays in person. Mark's is April 10 and Helene's is the 12th, which makes them easy to remember and twice as much fun! I texted Mark earlier in the week to ask if Helene had any favorite flavor combos (he will eat anything so I knew he would like whatever I made!) and he suggested raspberries with dark or white chocolate - YUM! I have never made a cake with fruit filling so I figured now was as good a time as any. I began searching online and ended up doing a combination of two recipes. I used the cake and frosting recipe from a post I found on Tasty Kitchen. I created the raspberry filling and garnish based on this recipe. Long story short, I love baking but I like to keep things simple. The cake recipe from Tasty Kitchen was a doctored cake mix (still tasted darn good to me) and the ganache was a simple chocolate melted with Cool Whip that I had already done for another recipe and knew it was impossible to screw up! Anyway, here are the results:

Yummy raspberry filling!

The cake was incredibly moist and I doubled the ganache recipe to make it extra thick and fudgy - a smalllllll slice was more than enough to feed my sweet tooth! ;) The most time consuming aspect of this recipe was straining the raspberries through a fine mesh strainer. I'm wondering, did I not puree them enough before straining, or is it just a laborious task? I felt like i was standing there pressing it through with a spatula forever. Any suggestions? I think it's true in baking that sometimes to make something a little extra special takes a little extra TLC and maybe that is the case with this raspberry filling because it sure did taste amazing!

Be back soon with Dorie Greenspan's famous World Peace Cookies, and yes, they are that good!