Bake 52: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

This last week has been a busy one for us. We moved. This is my kitchen in boxes. However, I could not skip participating in the baking group, move or no move. Why? Because I am married to a man who loves pie. His favorite happens to be strawberry rhubarb. So I was sure to plan the moving schedule around this pie ;) No packing the kitchen until the pie was done.

I know a lot of you had a hard time finding rhubarb at the store. We didn't see any at our local stores either. Good thing Nick always stocks up during rhubarb season. All I had to do is go to the freezer where we had our last bag of pre-cut rhubarb waiting. I told you he likes this pie. We eat it year-round.
After learning that, you could probably guess that Nick has tried many recipes for strawberry rhubarb pie and has settled on a favorite. Well, he doesn't actually follow recipes, but he follows the same general steps with the same ingredients - usually. :)

This recipe did teach us a few things. First, it has you mix your fruit and sugar to draw out the juices, then you strain it and save only 1/4 cup of juice to use in the pie. Nick thought the idea of draining the juices was a great idea, but was worried that you were also pouring out the sugar along with it and not adding much later on. His prediction: more tart than his usual, but possibly better consistency in the filling.

Now, we have a go-to pie dough recipe as well, but you never know if you really like yours the best until you've tried everything else, right? So, I opted to try the all-butter pie crust this time. The dough was easy to make and rolled out beautifully. It is my prettiest ever pie crust. I think I've finally mastered crimping the edges.

I couldn't wait to see this pie when it came out of the oven. It was gorgeous. It pained me to have to cut into it actually.

But cut into it I did. And here's the pretty slice:

I know you're all dying to know what we "experts" thought. Well, as Nick predicted, the pie was on the tart side. In the future, we would drain the juices, then add at least 1/2 cup more sugar before baking. The consistency of the filling wasn't bad, but it was a smidge runny still. Perhaps it didn't actually need the 1/4 cup of juice added to it. I might try it sometime without adding any more liquid and see what happens. Or, maybe it needed a bit more cornstarch. We'll experiment with that next time. If you look at a large version of the sliced pie, you might be able to see how the under side of the crust was soggy. I don't know if that was the filling's fault or the crust's fault, but it didn't keep us from enjoying the pie. By the way, this pie is best when eaten with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, in my humble opinion. They were really meant to be together :)

As for the crust, it may have been my prettiest, but it wasn't my tastiest. I wasn't in love with the flavor of the crust. I was really surprised, since buttery pie crust should be flaky and yummy, but to me it didn't really have much taste at all, and Nick said it tasted too buttery to him. But hey, there are still 2-3 other pie crust recipes in the book, so I'll work my way through those before I officially declare my favorite.

Head on over to Valerie's blog if you want to try this one out yourself and see what you think.