So, thanks to Mammy P, I’ve been alerted to the fact that it’s National Pie Week in Britain. Woot! Petrol! Flat! Bugger!

Let us all celebrate with pie, shall we?

This week I made a Strawberry Pie for no special occasion. It’s another pre-baked pie crust pie, with a chilled filling. Karen from Sassymonkey sent me a link to this very informative article last week about the legalities of re-posting recipes. Apparently, the list of ingredients is not copywritable (is that a real word?), and so you are free to repost it (it is considered polite to give a reference to the original source). However, the text that describes how to make the pie is copywrited, and can’t be simply copied onto your site — but you can rephrase it in your own words, especially if you are describing steps you took yourself to create the item in question.

So, this week, we’ll have more recipe details than usual. And you’ll want them, because this pie was SO easy, and SO yummy. It’s from Company’s Coming Pies, which I ordered online, which is marked “Not for individual resale” on the back, so I guess this pie is ILLEGAL. Illegally good! Har har!

First, here’s my crust:

This one was brilliant. I made it with shortening for the first time, because I’ll be seeing my mother over the Easter long weekend, and I intend to have an intensive one-day pie-making seminar with her, and she’d freak out if I wasn’t using Crisco. The mixing went really well, I took my time rolling it out and it went great, and all in all I was super happy with it.

It smelled so good coming out of the oven, I almost just broke it up and ate it plain. But I held out for filling. Here’s how:

Take 1/2 cup sugar, 1/8 teaspon salt, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and one 10 ounce (284g) package of frozen sliced strawberries in syrup – partly thawed – and mix them in a bowl.

Take one 7g package of gelatin and prepare according to the directions (sprinkle over 1/4 cup water, add 1/4 cup boiling water, stir to dissolve). Add to the strawberry mix and stir until the strawberries thaw completely.

Then put it in the fridge to “chill until syrupy.” I expected that to take about 1/2 hour. One half hour later, I had strawberry jello. Oops.

I think standard protocol in this case is to heat it in a pot until it melts and then re-chill. However, I was in a terrible rush to get out the door to pick up the Captain from school, so instead I just threw it in the microwave for one minute and stirred the heck out of it until I had a bunch of strawberry jello bits. Hence, my finished product is a little lumpy. But still delicious!

Anyway. To finish up, take 1 cup whipping cream and whip it until it is stiff. Then fold it into the syrupy strawberries, put it in the pie shell, and chill.

Here’s the finished pie (note the lumpy quality):

But oh so yummy. This would be so perfect for a summer barbeque or a tea-time baby shower. MMMM.

Next week I’ll be making a pear pie, and after that, I plan to try some savoury pies. Does anyone have a favourite main-course pie they’d recommend trying?