Strawberry Insanity

Ok so let’s give this blog thing another try! I’ve been wanting to blog, but ever since we found out I was pregnant (January) I haven’t been doing anything really amazing in the kitchen. That all changed yesterday when I got a burst of energy, that was supposed to be used for cleaning, and made strawberry pie and jam instead! I think my pregnancy “nesting” is going to manifest itself much more in the culinary sense than in the cleaning sense, but hey what else is new?!


Right now in San Diego we have some really wonderful strawberries available and they are on sale so how could I resist? I knew I wanted to do something delicious with my insane amount of strawberries and during my morning internet perusal came across an Epicurious article, “How to Make the Perfect Pie”. In the article was a recipe for a really delicious sounding mixed berry pie with a streusel topping. Ok, done!

I’m not a fan of a double crusted pie, I just don’t like crust that much, even when sprinkled with sugar and all that jazz, so the streusel topping really works for me. This streusel had almonds in it, giving it a nice crunch. In my head I’m already thinking, “Almonds and strawberries, what a healthy pie!” Yeah, I can justify anything food related.

I did decide to tweak the filling recipe because for some strange reason Brandon doesn’t care much for raspberries, blackberries or blueberries. Weird guy, I know, but I love him anyway. I decided to just go full on with strawberries, so I checked out a few other recipes to make sure I wouldn’t have a super liquid-y filling. I do not like the gel-like strawberry pies I’ve seen in restaurants like Coco’s. There’s something unnatural about that, I think. I wanted a nice natural looking filling that really let my delicious strawberries shine. Taking bits from some other recipes, I finally settled on the following:

• 6 cups of quartered strawberries

• Scant ¼ c brown sugar-more or less depending on the sweetness of the berries

• ¼ c corn starch

• 2 splashes of Grand Marnier

• 1 tsp (about) ground cinnamon

Let me just say, I hit this pretty right on, and it wasn’t just my I’m-pregnant-give-me-pie emotions getting the better of me. Brandon thought the pie was pretty incredible too. The strawberries tasted like strawberries. It wasn’t too sugary at all. The shortening-butter combination crust was nice and flakey and the streusel topping had a satisfying crunch. I served it with a big scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and it was just blissful. (Again, we hit quite a few food groups here; fruit, nuts, dairy and starches. What a healthy dessert!)

What to do with all those left over strawberries? Make some jam, of course! My mother-in-law has been making strawberry jam for years which my husband and I covet every time we have it. I keep forgetting to ask for the recipe so I just did another Epicurious search and found one. This recipe doesn’t use gelatin, just strawberries, lemon juice and sugar, and not even an insane amount of sugar at that. (12 c quartered strawberries, 1 c sugar, ½ lemon juiced) I did reduce my recipe since it would have made an absolutely insane amount of jam, and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out without the gelatin. I had to boil it down for a while to get gel-like but I think it turned out pretty good, again, nothing to interfere with the delicious tasting strawberries. One cup of sugar for 12 cups of strawberries is pretty minimal.

All in all I had a pretty productive day. I even got some cleaning up done, of course it was mostly just from my strawberry mess, but hey, it’s something!