80-mile Strawberry Pie

by April Paffrath

Want a slice?

This pie is a legend. A stunning pie that is the making of summer. It's the pie of my youth.

My husband and I took our daughter strawberry picking at Land's Sake farm in Weston, MA. (They don't use pesticides, which is especially important when you're all over the plants with your preschooler.) I've been waiting to take her strawberry picking because it's something I loved to do as a girl. There's no picking in the rain, so we had a long wait. It was totally worth it. I wish there were a fruit CSA, but I will happily go pick my own again at Land's Sake.

Fresh in the field: sun warmed, and bright red.

We brought home our multi-quart haul and I spent the evening hulling and chopping. It's mindless work in the best way possible. Meditative but vibrant. And so tasty.

This pie is easiest thing in the world to make, but every time I would consider making it in years past, my husband would just shrug his shoulders, not sure that it sounded altogether good. So, we would opt for shortcake instead, which we both adore. In his defense, the pie has jello in it, and that kind of creeps him out. If he thinks too hard about gelatin, it doesn't sound appetizing to him. That's fair...I guess. At the store last week, I bought a non-gelatin "gel dessert" and I knew that would make the amazing pie sound good to my gelatin-squeamish sweetie.

Back in college, a small group of us reconvened mid-summer for a long weekend in our apartment in Ithaca, NY. It was the Fourth of July weekend and we went strawberry picking on the first day. We picked 25 pounds. (What? It was too fun to stop!) The rest of the weekend was a festival of strawberries—smoothies, shortcakes, sundaes, and straight from the colander as we sat on the back porch overlooking Six Mile Creek, talking away the hours. I also made the pie. (With all of the other tempting choices, my husband, Matt, didn't have any.) That weekend stands out as one of the best weekends of my life—I was never so relaxed, and so full of amazing, gorgeous strawberries.

This pie has humble origins. Humble being the Elias Brothers' Big Boy restaurant in Bridgeport, Michigan. When I was a kid, we would go there mid-summer for a cold piece of strawberry pie in strawberry jello in a graham cracker crust, topped with some "creme" topping. But my mom knew she could make it better. And she certainly did. Oh, mater familias. She really knows her cooking.

The pie is all strawberries, just clinging together with the thinnest coating of "gelatin."

As a child, I had a strawberry patch in the backyard. The rest of the yard was covered in smaller, crazy-delicious wild strawberries. In season, my mother would send me to the back yard with a measuring bowl and tell me to fill it up to the line. I would pick the reddest berries from the patch and then wander the property looking for the tiny, wild, bright-red berries to fill the rest of the bowl. Back in the kitchen, she would prep the berries and fill a crust made from Nilla Wafers (which dwarf any graham cracker crust, honestly). And she would use raspberry Jello to offset the strawberry with a bit of depth. As she told me once when I was a small girl helping her: you don't want to mess up wonderful strawberries with sub-par strawberry flavoring. Then the whole pie would taste mediocre and fake—what a waste of berries that would be. Lesson learned and devoured.

When I made it this week and gave Matt a slice, his eyes lit up. I think he said something about my amazing skills and shining beauty. He said he couldn't believe how amazing it tasted and he was so happy that I made it anyway, despite his shrugging. Actually, what he really said was (and this is fact-checked with the source), "This is so good! You would drive 80 miles for a slice of this pie! This is better than you can get anywhere."

80-Mile Strawberry Pie

Crust

• a little less than 1 package of "nilla wafers" (whichever brand you prefer)
• 2-3 Tbs of melted butter

Filling

• Strawberries, enough for a pie. That's 1 1/2 quarts for us, because there's some eating that goes on while cooking.
• 1 1/2 boxes of raspberry gel dessert (jello or gelatin-free)
• 2 c. water for making the gel or jello.

Whipped cream

• 1 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
• 1-2 Tbs sugar

1. Crush the cookies in a food processor, or by hand. You want a fine crumb texture.
2. Drizzle in the melted butter and mix together. Add more or less to your tastes, but the crumbs should hold together when you squeeze them.
3. Press the crust into a pie pan and up the sides. Press gently but firmly, so the crust holds together. Take care with the bottom edges—it's easy to have crust buildup if you let the bottom and sides smoothly run into each other.
4. Wash and chop strawberries. Put them in the pie crust, right up to the top. Get as many in there as you can, because it just tastes better that way.
5. Boil 2 cups of water. Dissolve the gel dessert, whisking the whole time.
6. Slowly pour it over the berries. It will fill in all the cracks and crevices and creep up toward the top of the berries.
7. Put it in the fridge to set.
8. Cut the pie with a serrated knife so it slices through the jumble of berries and leaves a clean-ish edge to the piece.
9. Whip the cream, vanilla, and sugar and dollop on top with thoughts of summer and tasty treats in your head.
10. Eat up one piece and go back for a second. Stop yourself at three—for awhile—and remember that fruit is an important part of a healthy diet and strawberries are very high in Vitamin C.

Comments

[Joe Caputo]

Made this over the weekend with a few modifications. Strawberry season was short here this year -- because of all the rain, lots of berries rotted on the ground. However, since South Jersey is the self-proclaimed "Blueberry capital of the worl", I decided to make "80-mile Blueberry Pie". We just swapped strawberries for fresh-picked blueberries in the recipe. Also, I only had one box of raspberry Jell-o, so to be safe I supplemented with some plain gelatin.

Results: terrific!

My 9-year-old daughter, who is an absolute pie fiend, said that she now wants this pie for her birthday instead of her former favorite strawberry-rhubarb pie from our local farm bakery.

Thanks for a great recipe!

[Genevieve Rajewski]

I made this on July 4th. It was a huge hit--even though I couldn't score any local strawberries. (I made poor Nate driveall the way into the Cambnridge farmers' market Friday afternoon only to find them all sold out.) I also went with homemade vanilla ice cream made with Shaw Fram whole milk nad heavy cream instead of whipped cream--so, so good!

[April Paffrath]

Joe—That sounds terrific! I think I need to make 80-mile blueberry pie—and soon! YUM. Were the berries still whitish on the inside, I wonder? The way a fresh blueberry is? Or did they go purple due to the heat of the jello? Either way sounds fantastic. What a phenom modification.

Genevieve—I love those food quests, though, don't you? Homemade ice cream is a magic thing. Homemade whipped cream is, too. Can't surpass either one. Ice cream would be great on a super hot day.