Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Recipe

CRUST
1 1/4 c all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
8 T (1 stick) butter, cold and cubed
1/2 t salt
1/2 t sugar
2-4 T ice water

FILLING
3 1/2 c rhubarb, cut into 1/2" thick wedges
3 1/2 c strawberries, cut in half
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c cornstarch
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt
squirt of lemon juice


Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a pie pan. For crust, combine flour, salt and sugar, add butter and crumble until mixture resembles coarse meal, with pea-sized pieces of butter. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time until mixture just begins to stick together. Place chunks of dough in pan and press until flat. Chill crust. Mix strawberries and rhubarb together in a bowel. Add remaining ingredients and coat fruit well. Pour filling into crust and cook for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and cook for a remaining 1 hour and 25 minutes.


Notes:

• Grease the dish way more than you think. This is good because 1) there's no way anything will stick, especially in the corners, and 2) you'll get that lovely buttery crust!
• When making tart pastry, if butter is starting to melt put it in the freezer until you need more. You want it to stay as cold as possible.
• When placing tart pastry into pie pan, grab chunks and press until flat. Don't spend too much time on one part, or the heat from your fingers will start to melt the butter! You want to still see chunks of butter, as this will make the crust lovely and flaky.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Hey folks! I know it's been a long time....I haven't posted since January! But I swear I've been really busy. I was taking a massive amount of credits at school, which prevented me from doing anything but do work and eat, so that's my excuse. Now school is wrapping up and I find myself with a lot more time, which means I can finally bake again! One of my boyfriend's favorite pies is strawberry rhubarb, and his way of telling me he wanted me to make one was to put strawberries and rhubarb in the shopping cart and wait until we checked out. He offered a sheepish grin and said meekly, "Can you make me a pie?" I couldn't resist.

So as far as pies go, this is fairly simple. It doesn't seem to me to be a pie that begs for more ingredients than what is necessary, which is why what you see before you is not particularly interesting. Plus, about half of it is for the crust, which I'll talk about next.

My whole baking life I have stood staunchly by one specific recipe for most tart and pie crusts: a simple but effective tart pastry dough. It's easy, flaky, buttery and delicious. However, although I've never cared before I realize that this recipe is not ideal for pie-making. This is because it is meant to be for a tart, which only has crust on the bottom and not the sides. When I try to use it as pie dough it does indeed cover the bottom of my pan, but it takes some stretching to get it partway up the sides...and unfortunately this means that my fruit/liquid-based pies bubble out over the sides of the dish and make a bit of a mess. Taste-wise it doesn't change anything, but I think I will have to revise this recipe to make enough dough to be usable as true pie dough.

Like I said this is a fairly simple pie: strawberries, rhubarb, sugar(s), cinnamon and lemon. I have thought about it and think that a bit of cardamom might be delicious, but I have to try that first before I claim it as a good idea! I say sugars because it called for both brown and white, which made for a sticky delicious fruit filling.

I love pie recipes where I can write down the ingredients, a temperature and a time, and that's it. This pie only requires that you make the filling and put it in the pie. What was also helpful was that this used one package of strawberries and one package of rhubarb, so nothing was wasted and I didn't have to buy a ton of fruit. As a side note, always put some sort of thickening agent into your fruity or liquid-y pies, like banana cream pie. I use cornstarch because a little bit (1/4 cup) can go a long way, unlike flour, which seems to require a lot more. If you put no thickener in your pies the filling will just ooze out, whether it is cold or not. So friends, if you are making a gooey pie and the recipe does not call for a thickening agent put 1/4 cup of cornstarch in!

You can see I did make a top to my pie out of tart, which I normally don't bother doing, but again I didn't have enough to connect the dough so the juice oozed out a little. However, this didn't detract from the fact that the pie was absolutely delicious, and who could ask for an easier recipe? This is a must try!