The Bug That Fleeps

Let There Be Pie!

PAH. I LOVE PAH. Or...pie...PAH! Sometimes I forget how much I really love pie...I just remembered again the other day! So, it's summertime and the strawberries are just about getting to their "icky" point in the grocery stores. We are at that cusp where local strawberries are going bad and all that will be left is the strawberries flown in from goodness knows where! So, my mission was strawberry pie...wait, no....strawberry RHUBARB pie. If you have never had strawberry rhubarb pie, let me school you on this ridiculously delicious pie. It is the perfect sweet and tart pie with the most delectable texture and pie-ey goodness!

For my pie, I decided I wanted to go all out and make my very first crust from scratch! Therefore, I combined two different recipes I found online...a basic pie crust recipe (of which I will keep in my recipe book for future use) and a strawberry rhubarb pie filling recipe!

Here's how it went...

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, suuuuuper cold and cubed
1/4 cup ice water
In my food processor, combine the flour and salt...then, while pulsing the food processor, add a few cubes of butter at a time...once the butter was incorporated, quickly add the ice water and pulse it yet again. Just a note: when making a pie crust, be sure to work quickly...the colder the ingredients, the better the crust will turn out. Once the mixture has pea to lima bean size lumps in it, quickly press the mixture together to form a dough ball. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least four hours.

I made two dough balls because I needed one for the pie shell and one for the top of the pie! After refrigerating, remove the dough from the plastic wrap and lay it out on a floured surface. Patiently (yes, this did take some patience) roll out the dough to the size needed to line the pie dish.

(Yay for badly focused pictures...oops)

And now, THE FILLING.

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 lb fresh rhubarb, chopped

2 pints fresh strawberries

Chop the strawberries and rhubarb! I basically halved or quartered each strawberry depending on the size of the berry. For the rhubarb, I sliced down the rib of each piece and cut it into about 1/4'' pieces. Rhubarb is fairly bitter, so I wanted to be sure that the pieces were small enough that they would could through and be tart instead of bitter.

Combine all of the pieces together in a large bowl and add the sugar and flour. Take a little time to be sure that each piece is coated.

Let the berries and rhubarb sit in the sugar and flour coating for about 30 minutes to begin creating a saucy sweet goodness :)

Pour the strawberries and rhubarb into the pie shell and top with a few pats of butter.

Gently lay the second rolled out dough in top of the filling. Press together the dough in order to create a seal for the pie. Cut a few slits in the top of the pie to vent during baking!

Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, until golden brown.