Fresh Strawberry Pie

We got a big crate of strawberries from the Farmer’s market last Tuesday – freshly picked and bursting with flavor! Since very ripe strawberries don’t keep for very long, I decided to make this fresh strawberry pie for the 4th of July festivities! It can be a bit time-consuming to de-stem the berries, but otherwise this pie is incredibly easy to make!

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 pre-baked pie crust (I’ll post a recipe for that later, or just use your own!)
• 8 cups small to medium fresh strawberries, stems removed*
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp cornstarch

Preparation:

Prepare baked pastry shell, set aside.

Place 1 cup of the strawberries plus 2/3 cup water into a blender, and blend until very smooth. In a medium saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Stir in blended berry mixture. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture is thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir 2 minutes more. Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes without stirring.

Spread a bit of the glaze over bottom and sides of baked pastry shell. Arrange half of the remaining strawberries, stem ends down, in pastry. Spoon half of remaining glaze over strawberries, being careful to coat each one. Arrange remaining strawberries over the first layer, and spoon remaining glaze over berries, again coating each one.

Chill for 1 – 2 hours.** Enjoy!!

*Using small whole berries makes this pie very attractive, yet still manageable to eat. You can use larger strawberries if that’s what you have, just cut them in half first.

*Don’t chill this pie for much longer than 2 hours, as the glaze will begin to become watery and the pie won’t hold together as well. Unfortunately, this isn’t a pie that you can make the night before. You can, however, bake the pie crust and de-stem the berries ahead of time, which will save you lots of time on the day you plan to serve this!