This variation of a strawberry pie is something I first concocted
two or three decades ago,
and I
don't recall seeing anything quite like it served in restaurants,
sooo... --but it is still a recipe, and so cannot survive for very
long on the HalfBakery. Perhaps till after Christmas?
Things
to buy, or use that you already have on hand:
1 ready-made graham cracker pie crust/shell, about 9 inches
diameter
1 small package of flavored gelatin dessert (e.g. cherry or
raspberry)
1 16-oz bag of frozen strawberries
1 can of ready-made whipped cream
1 egg
Start with the pie shell and the egg. The pie crust is ready to
eat
as-is, but can be improved slightly. Pre-heat an oven to 375
degrees (F not C), in "bake" mode. Break the egg into an
appropriate bowl and stir it until you think it qualifies as "ready
to
cook as a scrambled egg".
Get a sauce-brush and brush the interior of the pie shell
thoroughly with the egg. Put the pie crust into the oven for
about
6 minutes. Remove and let cool, and turn the oven off. (For
the leftover egg, add
some
shredded cheese, mix well, and microwave for about a minute
and
a half, then eat.)
Now for the gelatin dessert. Get a medium-sized pot that can
hold about 1/2 gallon, and add a little more than 1 cup of
water.
Boil. The SMALL package of gelatin dessert probably specifies
starting with 1 cup of boiling water (that's how you know you
got
the right size package --but, duh, I just looked at the box and it
says "3 ounces/85 grams").
While the water is boiling, add the gelatin dessert and stir until
completely
dissolved. During this time the boiling water will be steaming
away, losing some of its original volume (which is why I specify
starting with a little more than 1 cup of water). When the
gelatin
dessert is completely dissolved, remove the pot from the
heating
element (and turn that off). IGNORE the rest of whatever
recipe was written on
the
gelatin dessert package.
Open the 16-ounce bag of frozen strawberries, and add all of
them
to
the still-very-hot water-plus-dissolved-gelatin-dessert, in the
pot
(which is why you want to start with a pot that can hold about
1/2
gallon). Stir thoroughly, using the stirrer to break apart any
clumps of frozen-together strawberries. The strawberries will
unfreeze and
the
liquid in the pot will cool fairly quickly. The first signs of
gelling
should be visible in 5 minutes of stirring, or less.
When you do see that the liquid in the pot is starting to gel,
pour
all of it into the pie shell. Preparing it with the egg has "sealed"
the graham cracker crust from absorbing the liquid (but waiting
for the gelling to start helps prevent absorption, too). Spread
the mixture of strawberries and
gelling liquid about, to roughly level the surface in the pie shell
(it should be a near-perfect
fit). Put it in the refrigerator to finish gelling. Total time to
reach this point, plus time for clean-up of the tools used, should
be less than 1 hour.
After the gelling process has finished, cut slices of the pie and
serve with whipped cream. The crust should be
nicely crunchy; the gelatin should have a fairly intense flavor
(although less than you might expect, because the un-freezing
strawberries will have added reasonable water content to dilute
the initial 1 cup of liquid) --and the strawberries and whipped
cream are almost always delicious. You could of course have
used
strawberry-flavored gelatin dessert, but that's just overkill on
one
flavor, so I recommend a different flavor of gelatin dessert, but
one that is
compatible with strawberries (banana, anyone?).
Happy Holiday Cooking Season! I'm sorry if any Bakers out
there
in Metric Land have trouble converting this recipe to other
measurement units, but I've simply described things/quantities
that are commonly available here in the USA, and have been, in
those units, ever since I first concocted this recipe.
==============
Nov 26, 2015
Here's another dessert, a peach pie that is somewhat simpler
and easier than the above strawberry pie.
You need 1 premade pie crust*
2 cans of sliced peaches
1 package of cream cheese
In American/English measurement units, the pie crust is for a 9-
inch pie; the cans of peaches each weigh 29 ounces, and the
package of cream cheese weighs 8 ounces. Converting those to
metric means the pie crust is about 23cm in diameter, the cans
are 822 grams each (I have the labels right here as I write this),
and
the cream-cheese package is 226 grams. You will probably find
some sizes
available that are not too different from those values.
The pie crust will probably come with instructions for making a
1-crust pie; follow them. Mine (pre-made and refrigerated, not
pre-made and frozen) said to put it in a pie pan, poke
a lot of small holes into it, and bake it for 12 minutes at 450F
(about 230C).
While the crust is baking, put the cream cheese into a large-ish
microwave-safe bowl, and heat it in the microwave for about a
minute (softens the cheese more).
The particular canned peaches I use are packed in 100% juice;
no "heavy syrup" or "light syrup". Whatever you use, open the
cans enough to drain the liquid without letting the sliced
peaches escape.
When the cans are drained, open them more, and put all the
sliced peaches into the bowl with the warmed cream cheese.
Mix them with a spoon, well enough to ensure some of the
cheese is coating all the peach slices.
Pour all of that mixture into the cooled pie crust, spread it to
make it roughly level, and then put the pie into
the refrigerator for an hour to make the cream cheese LESS
soft. It is always soft, but when chilled it is hard enough to do
the one thing that is most essential for a sliced-peaches pie.
When you cut the pie, the peaches will stick together enough so
that each pie-slice maintains its shape. Loose peach slices will
not
flow out of the sides of the cut pie slices.
*A second/upper pie crust is optional. If you do that, you
probably will want to not-fully-bake the lower crust, before
adding the cheese-peaches mix and putting the upper crust on
top. The lower crust will finish baking as the upper crust
bakes. The cheese
and the peaches can handle that cooking just fine. But it should
still be refrigerated before cutting/serving.