Sometimes You Just Gotta Do It Yourself

Once a year, and I do mean ONCE, I make a pie from a recipe that was given to me by a neighbor many years ago. It is a pie that one should eat only one piece of, so that means I invite people over to share in this annual baked treat- six slices of pie, six exceedingly happy people. And your taste buds just have to wait 364 more days to experience such bliss again, because delayed gratification is definitely part of the deal. Anticipation!

If this pie is to be at its maximum best you cannot make substitutes to the ingredients. Either make the commitment to create a delicious pie or go buy one of those mass-produced frozen "pies"  at the supermarket.

A word about ingredients. This pie calls for strawberries, and by strawberries I mean those red berries that have been grown in your own backyard, your neighbors backyard, at at least nearby your home. They haven't been shipped from far away, they are smaller than ping pong balls, and they have a strawberry scent that you can smell right away and recognize as strawberry. They are not hard and white inside, and they are juicy. Strawberries like this appear for only a short time in June, and you have to be ready to seize the day and make the pie when the berries are at their perfect peak of ripeness.

This pie also calls for whipped cream, real whipped cream, whipped by you using whipping cream and your trusty electric mixer. Or for the true lover of the kitchen arts, a balloon whisk. ( But I don't go that far.)  Do not try to substitute the stuff that comes out of the can and can be used to throw at Rupert Murdoch.

Now, here's the ingredient you have been dreading: a baked pie shell. I'm telling you -  no frozen shell, no store-bought shell.  A real pie shell baked by you, or your neighbor, or your mother assuming one of them knows how. 

One last point. The recipe calls for pure vanilla extract. Spend the money and buy the best pure vanilla. You WILL notice the flavor difference. And I will definitely notice if you should happen to invite me over to be one of the five guests who share your pie.

Strawberry Cream Pie To Die For

1 cup granulated sugar

6 Tablespoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups milk, scalded

2 slightly beaten eggs

3 Tablespoons butter ( yes, of course, real butter!)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 baked pie shell (remember what I said)

1 pint of strawberries, cut into halves

1 cup heavy cream, whipped with a little added sugar if you like it that way

Using a whisk, mix the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in the top of a double boiler.  Add the milk slowly, whisking while you do so and cook until the mixture begins to get thick, using a spoon to keep stirring  all that time. Take a couple of tablespoons of the hot mixture and add it to the two beaten eggs, slowly, stirring all the time. Then add this egg mixture back into the hot milk mixture and stir and cook for an additional couple of minutes until the eggs are cooked.  Remove the pan from the burner, add the vanilla and the butter and stir those ingredients in well.  At this point what you have made is vanilla pudding. Let the pudding cool, refrigerate and chill well.

When you are ready to assemble the pie, take the cold pudding and push it through a sieve ( making it nice and smooth) and scoop it into the pie shell.  Place halved strawberries all over the top of the pie in a single layer.  Cover the berries with the whipped cream, and then cover the whipped cream with another layer of berries.   

This is kind of a "soupy" pie, but I have never had complaints.  The taste is what matters. This pie can be made with bananas, or very ripe peaches, or blueberries instead of strawberries.

One piece of pie, once a year is not going to send you flying off to join a weight reduction program. But the question you now face is this: will it really be just one piece, once a year?