Strawberry Pies, Forever.

Monday, Monday...easy Monday, delicious Monday.

It started the same way every class thus far has started, making pie dough. Today we make mealy. So we brought the size of the butter down even further and decreased the water to a little more than half the original amount.

With that dough, we created another blind shell (pre baked shell) and Chef also demoed making pretty crimped edges.

Crimped Edges

Roll out the pie dough to about one and a half to two inches wider than an upside down pie dish. Place into pie shell as before. Begin building an edge up along the pie, about half an inch or so. Basically just so its all even in height. Then using your thumb and index fingers of one hand and thumb/index finger of the opposite hand, pinch the dough while pushing with the single finger. (Confusing i know, but pictures will help)

Building up an edge

Crimping with fingers

Trimming the excess off

Flatten out the ridge a little by slightly pushing down on a cake board (not necessary)To be used tomorrow.

Strawberry Chiffon Pie

First 2/3 of the frozen drained strawberries, sugar and salt are added to a pot and brought to a boil. Meanwhile, create a slurry with cornstarch and water. Whisk into the boiling fruit. Stir constantly until clear in appearance and thick. Add the reserved strawberries once off the heat. Add lemon juice (just a dash). Bloom powdered gelatin in water, heat until clear. This only takes about 20 seconds in our high powered microwaves. When the strawberry filling has reached about 130 F, stir in the gelatin. While that cools, you make a meringue. This is a 1 to 1 meringue (one part sugar to one part egg whites). Whip the room temperature egg whites ( must you pasteurized in this process) and slowly add the sugar in small additions. (we had to do it by hand because it was such a small amount, what a work out!)

Whipping the Egg Whites

Once you have reached a soft to medium peak and all your sugar as been added, fold the meringue into the strawberries. Do this in two steps.

Folding in the Meringue

Mid folding

Once fully incorporated, but not beaten to a pulp, place the mixture into a pre-baked cooled pie shell. Place into the fridge to firm up. It will be finished tomorrow with Chantilly cream.

My filled Pie Shell

We also baked our homestyle apple pies.

Baked Apple Pie

annnnd then we ate them with icecream

Delicious, easy, fun monday.