Strawberry Pie

4th of July is in a few days and I cannot wait! It has always been one of my favorite holidays. I enjoy making red, white, and blue desserts to celebrate the patriotic holiday. My husband and I went strawberry picking the other weekend and since we had picked tons of them, I decided to make a strawberry pie with a twist. This strawberry pie has a slight tartness from the lemon juice and zest. It was a big hit at work!

9” Double Crust Dough

2 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp lemon zest

1 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup plus 2 T shortening

4 to 5 T water

Pie Filling

4 cups strawberries, sliced

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1 T lemon juice

Zest of half a lemon

1T butter

Egg Wash

1 egg

1T water

To prepare the crust, combine the flour, lemon zest, and salt in a bowl. Using a fork, cut the shortening into the flour until it is the size of peas. Add the water 1 T at a time until the dough is moist and comes away from the edge of the bowl. You might want to add more water than you think so it is not too crumbly.

Gather the dough into two balls and flatten into disks. Wrap the disks in saran wrap and put in fridge for 1 hour. While the dough is chilling, preheat oven to 400 degrees and make the strawberry filling. Combine the strawberries, sugar, flour, lemon juice and zest. Set aside.

Remove one dough disk and roll out on a floured board until it is larger than the 9” pie plate. Use the rolling pin to slightly roll up the dough and transfer over the pie plate. Use your fingers to press the dough into the plate. Add the strawberry filling to the pie plate and top with butter pieces. Roll out the top crust the same as the bottom crust. For 4th of July, I thought it would be fun to make the top crust full of stars. I used cookie cutters to cut different shaped stars and layered these on top of the strawberry filling. 

Using a fork, mix together the egg and water. Brush over the top of the crust so it gets a nice golden color during baking. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until golden and bubbly. Let cool on a wire rack. 

One thing I have learned from making pies, is that they still taste delicious no matter how the crust turns out. Don’t worry if the crust isn’t perfect. You can patch it together to make it work. Fruit pies are one of my favorite things to make and it is even more fun for me to do it for 4th of July!