At Magicland Farms this year, we are planning to start providing recipes for the fruits and vegetables we grow. (This was done in previous years but in the past few years we had gotten away from it.) Due to popular demand I decided that we would provide recipes on the blog to coincide with some of the produce we have for sale at that time.

Since this is strawberry time, I thought I would start off with a recipe for strawberry pie. My husband really likes this one. I may have to make it again before the strawberries disappear.

Magicland Farms Strawberry Pie

1 recipe for a double crust pie (your favorite or see ours below)
4 cups fresh strawberries, cleaned and cut in half
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place a drip pan or aluminum foil on lower rack to catch pie juices.

Place strawberries in large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, flour and cornstarch. Gently coat strawberries with mixture. Let rest while you get pie plate ready.

Using half of pie crust dough, roll out bottom crust and place in pie plate. Pour berries into pie crust and set aside. With remaining dough, roll out a top crust and lay over pie, crimping edges of bottom and top crust together. Flute edges. Cut slits in top.

As an alternative, you can make a lattice top which is easily done by rolling out remaining dough and cutting strips with a pizza cutter. Weave strips over top of berries and tuck under bottom crust at edges.

Bake pie in preheated oven for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 375 degrees and bake for an additional 25 to 40 minutes depending on your oven. Our pies cooked in about 45-50 minutes.

PIE CRUST

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour — sifted
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup shortening (we use butter flavored Crisco)
7 tablespoons cold milk (about)

Sift together dry ingredients and with pastry blender, cut in shortening until mixture looks like coarse meal. Add enough milk until dough appears moist but not wet. Try not to use more than 7 tablespoons unless necessary to hold dough together. Turn dough out and knead on a few seconds to hold mixture together. Handle as little as possible. Roll out using your favorite technique.

This is the best recipe for pie crust I have ever made. Over the years, I have made pies but none of them had a light flaky crust. This one comes out perfectly almost every time. Using Crisco really helps as it seems that butter does not make a good crust. You could also use lard.

Also the addition of baking powder (which I have never seen in any other crust recipe) seems to make a huge difference in the texture of the crust.