Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Today's morning temperature is supposed to be 36 degrees, sigh. What do you do when Spring is lazily draggin' her feet, and berry season seems a distant dream? You make strawberry-rhubarb pie to comfort your chilly soul!

Back in the heat of summer I chopped and froze my extra rhubarb. (HA! I never thought I would get to say the words, "extra rhubarb"! That's magnificent, isn't it?) And in the peak of strawberry season, when Aldi has them for 99 cents, I eat as many as my skin can hold, and then begin chopping them to freeze. A berry frozen at it's peak is second only to one right from the vine.

You simply toss ---- of granulated sugar and ---- of instant Tapioca pearls (a very old-time pie thickening trick) with --- cups of chopped strawberries, and ---- cups of chopped rhubarb.

I made a French pate brisee pastry for this pie, using butter instead of my usual lard. I like butter crusts really well for certain things, but they don't keep their crispness the next day like lard does. I use a butter crust when I intend on that sucker being eaten up right now!

Look at those gorgeous lumps of butter in the dough, just waiting to be flattened out...

I always do double crusts for my fruit pies. How else can you sprinkle sugar over it so that it gets all lovely and sweet crusted?

Lay the crust in your pie pan and fill with the frozen (or fresh) fruit.

Top with the second crust and crimp the edges together, cutting some vent holes for steam to escape. Yeah, yeah, I hear you out there muttering, "She's been saying for ages she was going to do a video on making homemade pie crust!" When caught out like that, the folks in my family always say- "It's on the ten-year plan." ;)

Brush with milk or cream and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

You know how obsessive/compulsive I am about my baking. I bake the pie for 15 till the edges start to get color. Then I fold a square of foil into fourths and half moon, so that it opens to a have a circle in the center.

I fold it carefully down over the sides so they don't brown anymore, but the middle can continue. After 15 more minutes I put the circle that I cut out back in the hole to completely cover the pie. I let it continue for -----

Don't worry that you are cooking it over an hour. If you have it well covered the crust will be fine. And you want to cook it long enough that the bottom is flaky (no soggy bottoms!) and the liquid is bubbling. This means that the sugar and the natural pectin in the fruit juice is hot enough, so that when it begin to cool it will jell. Then you will have a delicious pie that you can slice without the contents running out and making you sad! When I see a fruit pie that won't cut into neat slices I know they didn't cook the fruit long enough.

Do you see above? It had only been out of the oven a few moments and already the juices were jelling to a stretchy syrup. YUM! I may have taken the pie off and then scraped the pan remains straight into my mouth.

Cooling on a rack, while lookin' ever so lovely. I made two pies for our supper, one chocolate-coffee because there are those few pain-in-the-patooties who don't like to eat cooked fruit in desserts. (massive eye roll)

Here is what was left after the hoard had finished supper and gone at both pies. Just enough for me to have for breakfast and snack the next day. Note how all the other slices are gone, but the remaining ones are still intact and not losing filling. And look at that flaky crust!

The next day- the crust was softer, but the filling was still just as luscious...

I like the berries and rhubarb cut into nice big chunks so that they don't break down and become mush while baking so long. I like to get a bite like this and be able to tell that I have a piece of each on my fork!

Until fruit season is upon us again, we have to do what we can to stave off the cravings. I know that Harp's grocery carries bags of frozen rhubarb; it's one of the only places that does. If you are needing something to keep up your strength after a long winter, why don't you try a strawberry- rhubarb pie? It's bound to make you taste summer right now!

(psst! You might also like my post- Strawberry Rhubarb Compote and Fool )