Strawberry pie

As I promised in my previous post, here is the recipe for the strawberry pie I've made for Thanksgiving.
After I've read a lot on pies ( crusts and fillings separately) I've used the Culinary Cafe recipe for crust. I am pasting it as it is there, you can check the full explanation and wonderful article they have here:

* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
* 1/4 to 1/2 cup water

1. Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in food processor. Add butter; process until mixture resembles coarse meal, about 8 to 10 seconds. For hand method, place dry ingredients in large bowl. Add butter; blend with pastry cutter until mixture resembles coarse meal.

2. Add ice water in a slow steady stream through feed tube of food processor with machine running, until the dough holds together for no longer than 30 seconds. For hand method, mix dough with a wooden spoon, adding water until dough just holds together.

3. Turn dough onto piece of plastic wrap. Press into flat circle, or rectangle depending on what shape you intend to roll out pastry to. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour. May be frozen, double wrapped in plastic, for several months.

Now the filling is another story. My son wanted strawberry pie and I've never made one, so I did quite a research on how to do it. Most of the pies were "cold" in the sense they weren't baked with the strawberries, but my son wanted one that would be baked with the strawberries, so I had to think of something.
I combined couple of recipes in one and here is my filing:
-1 can of strawberry filling
-2 cups of fresh strawberries
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
4 tbsp corn starch
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg white for brushing on top

Basically mix the can of filling, the fresh strawberries, the sugar( brown and white)and the vanilla extract well. In a separate cup mix the corn starch and the water and then add to the mixture. Pour in the filling over the bottom crust,cut whatever shapes you want on the the top crust and cover the pie with it.



Bake for 40-50 min on 350 F or until golden brown in color. Don't forget to cover the edge of the pie with aluminum foil so it wouldn't burn.
Take it out of the oven and let it sit for at lest 30 min. You can garnish it with whipped cream and nuts.



I have to admit I wanted to "improve" this recipe even more, but I didn't there since it was my first time making it. Anyway, my initial idea was to melt chocolate, and brush it over the bottom crust, let it cool and set and then to fill with the filling. I had also idea to put some pecans inside, but I guess I'll do that next time. If any of you tries it in the mean time with the extras, let me know how it did turn out.

We were never ones for pies, but this was out of this world delicious.I was afraid to bake a pie before because I thought it would be this runny mushy thing, but as you can see from the picture, it wasn't runny at all!!! It was grate and I'll definitely keep the recipe.
Enjoy!

Thanksgiving 2008

As with Bulgarian tradition, we celebrate The day of the christian family a week earlier, but since Thanksgiving is an oficial holiday and my husband is not working, we celebrate it on Thanksgiving.
I like the idea of this holiday, to give thanks about things that happend and some that don't.
I am thankful about a lot of things, but the most important one is that we are healthy, we are together ( I still can't forget all these years of waiting...) and we are happy!
I am tankful that even the kids keep me busy I have the time ( mostly because of my husband) to do things I love, to imagine, to create, to feel me.
I am tankful for the bread on our table and as we Bulgarians say, "Pray to have as much[as today], when you have nothing"!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
I'm posting the pictures from our Thanksgiving dinner, I'll probably post the recipes in the next couple of days.
This is my first ever strawberry pie. Until now, we didn't like as much pies. I mean we ate them, but didn't enjoy them, so I didn't bother to bake. My son was talking me into baking a strawberry pie for quite some time and I thought Thanksgiving is a good occasion.

Here it is after it was baked. I still can't believe it tasted amazingly delicious!!! The crust was just right, the consistency of the filling was just right, not runny at all as many people complain their pies turn out. I've made it with filling as well as with fresh strawberries. I'll be posting this recipe for sure!


And here is a piece of course:

We also had Thanksgiving bread:

And our tomato-mozzarella salad:

And some saute green beans, as well as some mashed potatoes:

And our pear-jam glazed turkey ( it was delicious, but I prefer the look of the one I've made last year).

And last but not least, the cranberry-pomegranate freshly brewed drink, that we like to mix with fresh tangerines and lemons, as well with some red wine:

I just love that last one, of course the kids get only the juice :-)
Have a nice weekend!

Scrapbook challenge- Fall Butterflies

I've participated in a scrapbook challenge with a postcard and I felt like sharing it with you.
It's my first card from this type, so I am kind of proud it turned out well enough to be shared. :-)
The challenge theme was Fall Butterflies and I just came up with the idea my butterflies to "fly up" the pages when the card is opened.
I don't have special tools or anything, I used just a regular pair of scissors, 3 sheets of colored paper, a cardboard for the card base, a little glitter, regular glue and a piece of baking parchment paper.
I am kind of laking the whole card-hat-gift bag making, I'll have to put some more effort in it I think :-) I really don't have the time( and money) to make a cake every day and all this creative energy that's been bugging me has to be exploited some how ( in a constructive kind of way off course LoL).
So basically this is the front of the unopened card:
This is opened parchment paper layer:
And here the "flying" butterflies , ta-da:
I hope you like it :-) You can check the bags and card I made recently in my Arts&Crafts album set in Flickr.

Care Bears birthday cake

Hi all,
although it is very simple, I had quite a trial with this cake. It was like my hands weren't mine! On top of that my daughter ( 2y) ate the first decoration with royal icing, so I had to make fondant patchwork, which was way difficult that I expected, considering I didn't have a mold or cutter or anything! I was just looking from the picture, I coulndn't use even the transfer paper, because it turned out my pencils give the fondant " dirty look"! Terrible! Then my Royal icing all of a sudden just started to melt on top of the cake ( that was a first one!) overall, it wasn't my day. Sorry about the bad pitures, I just so didn't like it that I didn't want to bother to even try to take good pitures.


As I said before, the top is a patchork, not a drawing.
Did I mention that my thingy that makes the tiny little ropes finaly broke, so I had to make them by hand ( sigh)?

The cake was supposed to be different, but now I just hope the girl likes it.
We are going to pick up our puppy in couple of hours, so I'll be posting today again I guess :-)