Master One Pie Crust for Summer Galettes Tarts and Hand Pies

Most bakers think that they need a different pie recipe for every pie they make, and it's not true. Hi, I'm Gemma Stafford, a pastry chef with over 20 years experience, and I'm going to show you how you can take my one homemade pie crust recipe and turn it into everything from a rustic summer galette to a decadent chocolate tart and even individual little hand pies. And once you know the basics, you'll see how one recipe can be countless desserts. So the one pie crust I'm using for all of these videos is my most popular on BiggerBolderBaking.com easy homemade pie crust. It is very simple, a few ingredients, easy to make.

It has the most reviews and the highest stars of all my pastries. It is my go to and a lot of your go to as well, you might recognize it. So I'm going to start out by making it just so you know exactly what to do. We have some all purpose flour in this bowl, and into it I'm going to add in a little bit of powdered sugar. Now you do see some pie recipes called for granulated sugar. Powdered sugar is preferred because it mixes straight in and really easily and it's not gritty and granulated. Then we have salt that is super important.

Going to mix those ingredients together just until it's combined. Some people use pastry flour, I don't use pastry flour, it's not totally necessary and it's not available in every country. So all purpose flour, plain flour is just fine. Now let's talk about butter, the star of the show of any pastry. We want salted, we want European style. I use Irish butter, this is a brand called Truly which I absolutely love and it comes from the southeast of Ireland. I feel very fortunate to be able to get it here in America. Lots of fat, very little butter, fat equals flavor. That's what you need for a pie crust.

It is all about the butter and the quality when it comes to pie crust. So now we blend in the butter. You can do a few things, you can do a fork which will take you a very long time like we used to do in home economics class. You can do your fingers which is old school and what I grew up doing or you can use a pastry blender. This is a really inexpensive tool when it comes to making pastry and I actually really recommend it. By using a pastry blender it means your fingers don't have to go into the pastry. Your fingers have oils on them and they also are warm and that can soften the butter and also make it greasy. When it comes to pastry making one of the key tips is to do it

fast with as little hands as possible. And that's exactly what this little tool does. So you do want your butter to be cold going into your pastry. Sometimes I leave it out for a few minutes to get a little bit softer. We will be chilling it later. But I just want you to see this. It doesn't take long. We did not have to involve our hands and I want to show you a beautiful pastry is not uniformed bits of butter.

It's big bits, small bits, all coated. If you were to do it with your hands, this is what you're doing. You see this? This rubbing technique. Rubbing in butter into flour was actually the very first technique I ever learned. Probably at around six years old when my mom showed me how to make apple crumble. So look at that. Lovely. All rubbed in. The mixture looks kind of yellowy. Flour is coating. Butter lumps. Beautiful. One thing I always say about making pastry is rub in the butter until it resembles coarse bread crumbs. And if you keep that in mind, then you

know when to stop and you know exactly what you're looking for. So let's talk liquid about the pie crust. It is so crucial the liquid that you use and the amount that you use because that can really determine the end result for your pastry. So here I have some water but only a little bit of water. If you ever make pastry on 100% water. So what happens is you put it into the oven, it heats up, the water evaporates and when it evaporates the pastry shrinks, which is one of the biggest issues people have. So I use a little bit of water and I add in an egg yolk, which is fat and richness and flavor and it will not evaporate. And I'm going to mix those two ingredients together. On BiggerBolderBaking.com I also have

really great recipes for pastries made with no water using yogurt or sour cream and butter milk. Now those are fantastic. Extra fat, extra flavor, less shrinkage. So you can use any of those pie crusts either. Once that's mixed together, pour it over and the dry ingredients. I like to do this with a fork for some reason and then just mix it together. So liquid is really key. If you have too much water in your pie crust, it won't be flaky and it would just be hard and boring and also no flavor. So I'm going to show you this.

Bring it together with your hands briefly, swiftly, just like this. Look at that. Perfect amount of liquid. I didn't have to add any more. So here's the thing about pastry. It's better to be on the drier side. That'll make it more tender and crumbly. This came together just with my hands. What we do now is chill pastry. So it's really important to chill pastry, all pastry. And here's the reason why. You want your butter to be extra cold and extra hard to yield you the best flaky pastry. But also you see the way this looks like it might be a bit dry.

It's not because what happens is we're going to flatten it down and we're going to wrap it in cling wrap. So when this pastry is relaxing, the flour will absorb all the water and it will actually get rid of any dry bits and be like the perfect texture. So do not worry if you feel like it's too dry now. In a half an hour minimum, it'll be much better. So what I want to do now is put this into the fridge. So now that we're all expert pie crust makers, we're going to start out with our first pie. I'm starting small and I'm going to end big. The first one we're making is blueberry pie cookies. Now these pies are small but they are mighty loaded with flavor.

Super delicious. I have doubled my pie crust to make this recipe which you can easily do and that information is on my website with the recipe. So we're going to flour our surface and we are going to roll out our pastry to around an eighth of an inch thick. Another great tip just as a baker people always ask me what is your go to tool and they're probably thinking I'm going to say like a really good spatula or a whisk. It's not. I'll tell you what my kitchen tools are that I can't live without a pair of scissors and a ruler. I have one ruler right now but normally I have around five.

It's so important to measure pans, to measure thickness of pie crust, whatever it is, when you're cutting out biscuits, when you're trying to figure out what size a cookie cutter is. So many uses. Get them in the dollar store or as we say in Ireland the pound shop. Now eighth of an inch thick. Be careful not to roll your pastry too thin because when it comes to these little pies you have the perfect amount of pastry and then pie filling in the middle. Now with our small cutter cut out your circles. From a double pastry you're going to get around 24 circles. After cutting it out with your scraps gently kind of fold them over try not to work them with your hands too much and re-roll.

Whisk not, want not. That is still good pastry. When it comes to the very end I don't use the tiny scraps just because they've been folded and rolled and folded and rolled. If you like to make bigger hand pies that's totally fine use a bigger cutter. I wouldn't go smaller than three inches because they'll be very hard to handle. Once you have all your circles lay your circles on a lined baking sheet. So much easier to handle if you put the pastry on the tray already. Before we put on our filling just brush the edges of the circle with a little bit of egg wash and this will just ensure that our pastry seals well and we don't have our filling bursting out and losing it on the baking tray. Because these are blueberry pie cookies I

have my homemade blueberry pie filling. This is on the website is really easy it's blueberry some water some sugar and some cornstarch. It's easy to make you can make it in advance and keep it in the fridge. And as you can see the consistency is nice and thick which is what we need for our little pies. So for best results don't over stuff the pie because you'll just lose all your filling. So less is actually more because it'll stay put. So I say around you know a teaspoon and a half two teaspoons and if your pie filling is a little bit on the thinner side hold back some of that liquid.

Lovely. Before we put on our lids just take a little knife and score the top piece. It's much easier to do this when it's not on the pastry already so it doesn't mess with the filling. So just a little slit to let out steam and that will also help your pocket not explode because the steam has to come out of somewhere. When we create a little vent it helps. That means your pocket won't pop on the side. Steam will come out the top just like the way we do with bread. And then just take your little lid and pop it on top just like that.

Giving it a little press down along the seam. We're going to go back over and seal those with a fork. Beautiful. Look at these they are so cute. Once your lids are on we're just going to go back over and seal the pastry with a fork. Super old school but we just want to make sure we seal in the filling just a little bit on the edges. Once they're sealed go back over egg wash. Egg wash generously so we get lovely golden brown crust. Lastly sprinkle over a little bit of granulated sugar for a bit of crunch on the pastry.

Look how cute these are now. Imagine what they're going to look like when they come out of the oven and although we made 12 individual pies they're actually pretty fast to make. So let's get them into the oven because it's nice and hot and ready for them. Bake your blueberry pie cookies at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, 190 degrees Celsius for roughly 35 minutes or until they're a lovely golden brown. Our pies are done they smell amazing. I think I might have added a little too much filling because it's spilling out of a few. But they still look good and they're going to taste great.

These little pies are fantastic for the summertime because they're portable, they can be eaten warm or cold. You can serve them with vanilla ice cream or a little bit of whipped cream on top. Definitely best eaten the day that they are baked even within a few hours. So the pastry is soft and crumbly and the filling is still warm. Another fantastic summer pie recipe that is really easy to make is a galette because you don't have to mess with a pan, it's a freeform pie, super simple, absolutely delicious and it's rustic looking and really fantastic. So I've got one pie crust again and a

floured surface, I'm going to roll it out. Roll your pie crust until around an eighth of an inch thick to a diameter of around 13 to 14 inches and a circle as best you can. So as you can see it looks a little bit rough, that's why it's called a rustic galette. I like to just for a little bit of a uniform look, I just kind of take a little cutter and just trim those rough edges. You do not have to do this and if you do it just take a tiny bit off, you don't want to lose any of that size, just like that. And then carefully lift your pastry over onto a baking tray lined with parchment. Some ways I do that to transfer pastry is I fold it in half and I fold it over again, look at that, nice, put it on your tray and unfold it. A lot of people worry about working

with pastry and moving it can be tough but I just showed you a fantastic chef secret. So there we go, lovely. So now the filling for this pie is one of my favorite things in the world. It is frangipan. Frangipan is a mix of almond flour, some eggs, some sugar. It's very delicious and works great as a filling for a pie because it bakes up kind of firmer. So we're going to add that to the middle of our pastry. The recipe for this can be found in the link below or on BiggerBolderBaking.com. With frangipan make sure you make it a few hours in advance so it has time to firm and you can even make it up to a few days.

It also freezes really well to really make life easy this summertime. Spread it out on your pastry until it's around three to four inches away from the border. So being a summer pie I really wanted to utilize what we have in the summertime that is really great. So I have a mixture of peaches and strawberries and blueberries. You can do plums and cherries, nectarines, stone fruit, it bakes up fantastically. It gets soft but it also holds its shape. Pile that in the center of your pie. So now like I said no fiddling around with pie crusts. We're going to bring the pastry up the side and encase the frangipan. The frangipan really does a few things. It makes for great flavor and

texture but it also works as a barrier between the pastry and fruit and it will soak up any of the juices that come from the fruit. So it has a very important job to do and that's how simple it is. Look at that, beautiful. The last thing we want to do before it goes into the oven we're going to egg wash it generously with the egg wash to make sure it really gets nice and golden in the oven. And if you want to sprinkle a little bit of granulated sugar on the pastry just like we did with the pies to create a nice kind of a crisp bite. There you have it in no time at all, a beautiful galette ready for the oven.

Bake your galette at 425 degrees Fahrenheit 220 degrees Celsius for around 35-40 minutes until it's lovely golden brown all over. Look at how beautiful this is. This dessert screams summertime to me. What I love about it is the dimension and the texture. You have got crisp buttery pastry, a soft almond filling and then fresh seasonal sweet fruit on top. I definitely recommend eating this one still a bit warm from the oven with some vanilla ice cream on top. Warm pie, sweet fruit, buttery flaky pastry and cold vanilla ice cream on top. It doesn't get much better than that. Our third pie is a great one for lemon lovers, lemon chiffon pie.

Perfect for this time of year. The difference with this pie is we're going to blind bake our pie crust so you're going to learn technique. Then we're going to make our filling on the stovetop and set it in the fridge. Pretty simple, really lovely and not too much in the oven. So I'm going to show you how to blind bake a pie crust. This is essential for all you bakers out there to learn this skill. Here we have our pastry again, one crust and we are going to roll it out to around 10 inches, an inch bigger than our nine inch pie pan so we get extra overhang and that's really important when lining a pie dish. If you have extra pastry to work with it might seem at first nice cold pastry from the fridge.

If it's too cold, just give it a minute, but be patient. We do want to work with a cold pastry for best results. My little test is I always put the pie pan in the middle. If I see that there's extra pastry, that's great. While I'm showing you pie tips, this is a really fantastic one and it takes the pressure out of moving pastry. Roll it over your rolling pin and lift it. Look at that. You didn't crack it, you didn't break it. And because it's nice and cold, it is holding its shape. Then watch this is even better.

Roll it over your pan. See, gorgeous. It falls into the shape, push it down the sides. As you can see here, I missed a little bit with the pastry. Here's what I'm going to do a little bit of patchwork and you'd be none the wiser. Lovely. Oh, I just thought of another little trick. Get a scissors and go around and give a uniform smooth round look. Remember leaving overhang because we want to crimp our crust. If you don't have enough overhang, use these bits and pieces to fill in any gaps. Do not be ashamed to do that. I do it all the time. So there you go. You can see we still have that extra bit of pastry to work with. If you cut too much off, it can be a bit tricky. So just be careful. You also want to leave overhang in

your pastry shrinks. So you still end up with a nice size crust. Now crimp your pie any way you would like. One way that I love to do that's really simple, a little kitchen hack is the back of a spoon. Just like that. When your crust is nice and thick, it'll hold that shape. So there we go. Crimp it any way you like. I find that easy. Let's dock our pastry, which means take a fork and just create some holes in the bottom. So it bakes evenly nice and flat and you don't have little bubbles of steam showing up. Here's something that is really important egg washing before we go any further. So egg wash your crust along the edges. But get this, because we are fully baking this pie crust, you want to brush the bottom also.

This does two things. It makes it lovely golden brown, but the egg seals the pastries. So when you're soft filling, be it a pudding or moose, kind of like the lemon chiffon that we're going to do, it will create a barrier and stop it soaking into your pastry. So blind baking is baking your pie crust first before you add in your filling. So line it with a nice big piece of parchment. And if it looks too small, take it out, make a new one. I'll tell you why. If it's not big enough, your beans will go everywhere. Go into the pie crust and you don't want that. That has happened to me and it's not fun. Also, make sure you don't just pour your beans or your sugar or your rice or whatever it is into your

pie crust without parchment because I've also done that. It was many, many years ago, but I have done that too and I wasn't thinking. So for blind baking, you don't have to use baking beads because number one, they're very expensive and they're not necessary. Let's get resourceful here. Let's get a little bit thrifty. I use old beans that I bought thinking that I was going to eat them and I didn't. So I use those. I use brown rice because I never got to eat it. It had gone past its date, but it makes great baking beans. You can use sugar, old garbanzo beans, whatever it is, something to hold down that pastry and you want it to come quite high because we need it to hold the sides in place.

Also, this weight stops pastry sinking and it keeps it in shape. So that's blind baking. It is an extra step, but honestly, when you get used to doing it, it's not difficult. So this is ready to go. If you want to make sure your pastry is really lovely and cold, pop it back into the fridge or even the freezer for a few minutes and then put it into the oven. When it comes to blind baking, I always put a tray in the oven to preheat. So then you can put your pie dish directly on it and that means it will get brown from the bottom and you won't end up with a soggy pie crust. This is a really good chip to remember. So the lemon chiffon filling is a mix between a custard and a mousse. We're going to do a custard base and then we're

going to whip up egg whites and then make it into kind of a mousse. So imagine lemon curd lightened with egg whites and that's really what it is. So the first thing we're going to do is bloom our gelatin because it is a pie filling that is set with gelatin. You can use agar if you wish and which is a vegan alternative. I am using regular gelatin and I have some water here and what I'm going to do is sprinkle over the gelatin over the water and then give it a stir with a fork or a tiny whisk to make sure it doesn't form lumps. One of the issues with working with gelatin and I've seen this over the years is that if it lumps it's very hard to get those out. Look at that, see it's nice and smooth. That's what you're looking for. You need

to be nice and smooth so you get the full effect of the gelatin. If it's not bloomed correctly then you're going to lose some of the setting power and just an FYI in case you're a bit funny about gelatin you do have to have some setting agent. You cannot go without it. So we're going to let that bloom there for a minute. What happens is it forms a gel it hydrates. We're going to start on our custard. So I've got a heavy bottom sauce pan here. We have low heat and I'm going to add in my egg yolks, my sugar, fresh lemon juice and not carton or from a little squeezy bottle and then some lemon zest which is really just lovely concentrated flavor. Give those a mix together before the heat gets to them and what we're going to do is just cook this gently and

lightly until it thickens like a custard and it will coat the back of a spatula or a spoon. The one thing you do not want to do here is crank up that heat, get impatient thinking it'll cook faster. It won't it will just curdle. So just do this low and slow. Take your time. We've got nothing else to do here. We're just making pies. So it doesn't take long for this mix to thicken because it's so small but as you can see it's nice and thick. So this is ready to go. My gelatin. Look at this boopity boop. Set nice and smooth no lumpy bits. I'm proud because sometimes I get lumpy bits. We are going to whisk all of this in to our filling and this is what's going to help set our pie. I

will tell you in case you're thinking to yourself why don't you just add the gelatin into the pie? Why is she going to that step? Unfortunately that does not work. You have to bloom gelatin in a separate liquid. You can't just add in powdered gelatin into a mixture. Okay lovely. To hand when you're making a custard or anything like this occurred have ready a bowl with a sieve over it because we always want to sieve anything that's egg based to remove any lumpy bits in case it happens. And it often does happen. But to get really smooth silky results you need that custard to be velvety. There's the zest.

There is a few little bits of cooked egg. That's okay. It happens. But that's it. So this is the biggest part of our pie filling. We're going to let it cool down. You can put it over ice water if you want to. Let it sit out at room temperature. And then we're going to move on to the next step which is whipping up egg whites. So with blind baking there's two different things. You want your pie crust fully baked or only half baked. For this pie we want it fully baked. After those few minutes we take out the beans, set them over to the side. As you can see it's browning on the outside but it's still

raw on the bottom. If you're worried at this point about the rim of your crust being too brown then cover it with a little bit of foil and that will stop it from getting browner. So we pop back into the oven at a lower temperature for another few minutes until it's fully baked. So let's whip up our egg whites. Now these are the egg whites that we saved from making the custard with the yolks which is super handy. It's only two so I'm going to use a hand mixer. So when whipping up egg whites make sure they're at room temperature because they will whip up so much better than cold straight from the fridge.

I leave them out for like an hour or sometimes I even leave them out overnight. Make sure that your bowl is nice and clean and has no traces of fat because that can actually inhibit peaks from you want to make sure that there is no yolk in your whites either. If you at home are concerned about consuming raw egg whites I'll give you a few tips. Number one buy really good quality eggs and make sure they come from a good source so you know that you're eating the you know the best quality eggs possible and if you do have a concern put a little bit of lemon juice in there to kind of sterilize the eggs. I have no concern about eating raw egg whites. I use organic eggs. I never use fresh egg. I don't think I said that.

Fresh eggs not old eggs hanging around and at this point is when you slowly add in the sugar. A common mistake that people make is that they add in the sugar too quickly. The egg whites fall because they can't hold the weight of the sugar and then you can't get a lovely thick meringue so you have to get it to soft peaks then slowly add in your sugar and you slowly add it in for the same reason so it doesn't land heavy on your eggs. Once your sugar is all in there I like to whip it. Another two minutes or so we're still on high speed. You can see it's lovely and thick and glossy and it has grown in volume. This is great. So our lemon curd mixture has cooled down. If you do put it on ice I want to just warn you to make sure just for

a few minutes and continue to move it around so it doesn't set in one big lump because that can happen. So just a few minutes over ice if you need to but this is nice and soft, smooth, perfect for adding in our egg whites or our meringue. So here is our meringue and what we do is add it all in there. It's only a little bit. This is great to make a head pie to get it ready the day before. So now with a metal spoon if you watch a lot of Bigger Bolder Making you will know this fold the meringue in with a metal spoon not a spatula because a metal spoon has a thin edge spatula has a big thick edge. We just spent all that time incorporating air into our meringue and making it nice and soft and fluffy why would we go and knock it all out with

a thin metal spoon and that nice thin edge it kind of glides through the meringue easily incorporating it without sacrificing the air bubbles. Beautiful like silk like lemon silk. Beautiful we have our prepared pie crust here ready to go and then just pour your filling into your pie crust. Nice and smooth just like that. So because this is a mousse filling I like to put it into the fridge for around like maybe two hours then go back and cover it in cling wrap. I don't want the mousse to form a skin but if you put cling wrap on it right now it'll actually mark the mousse filling that we made. So pop it into the fridge and you're going to want to let it set for at least four hours but I like to give it

overnight just to make sure it really holds firm. Bigger Bolder Baking is about simple recipes with over the top results and that's exactly what this pie is. It might have been quick and simple to make but boy does it pack a punch. To serve I actually like to pile just some plain whipped cream on top. You've got the crisp buttery pie crust you have the set lemon filling and you've got soft fatty whipped cream on top. Three lovely textures that give you the most amazing bite all in one. If you were to sum up summer flavors when the sun is shining and it's hot outside I think lemon would be high up on your list. So I'm saving our next pie towards the end to get you really

excited about something chocolaty. We're going to make chocolate pudding pie. This is so delicious. It has a lovely texture and flavor and richness. Now the good thing about this pie is you're going to need a pie that has been blind baked. You already know how to do that because you made the lemon chiffon pie. You did a great job. So we're going to need that again to make this pie. So do that first and then we're going to head over to the stovetop and we're going to make the chocolate pudding filling. So yes the filling for our pie is actually chocolate

pudding but we're going to zhuzh it up a little bit to make it nice and fancy and really just decadent and delicious. So in a heavy-balm saucepan I'm going to add in cream. That's a lot of cream but let me tell you something. It adds loads of flavor. It also thickens it a little bit. This pie is very rich, very indulgent so we're going all in on the cream. Then we do have a little bit of milk and some granulated sugar in there. Then we're going to turn on the heat to a medium-low. I'm going to whisk in that sugar and make sure it doesn't sit on the bottom of the pan and cook in a lump. We're going to let that come to a simmer.

It'll take a minute. Let's do its thing. What really thickens this pie though is egg yolks because it's a pudding base so similar to a custard pudding they're very similar. To help thicken it we are going to add in some corn starch, also known as corn flour. You can also use arrowroot or tapioca, whatever works for you. They're all gluten free. Just whisk that together until smooth. When our milk and cream mixture comes to a simmer we're going to temper those eggs. So there you go. I can see it coming to a simmer. So now we are going to temper our eggs. What that means is we're going to take a little bit of this hot liquid, pour it onto our prepared egg yolks and then whisk the hot liquid into the cool egg yolks.

Once that's mixed in we're going to go with another ladle and do another ladle. Now the reason for tempering, just in case you're wondering like what's the point, why can't we just add the egg yolks into the hot liquid. What will happen is the shock of the cold egg yolks going into the hot liquid will cook the egg yolks and you'll end up with big lumps of cooked egg. What you need to do when you have two different ingredients trying to combine them together, they have to be similar texture and then similar temperature. If they're not the same temperature it can make it very difficult.

These yolks have come now to be quite warm just like the milk mixture. So now we're going to add that into the pot. As you can see that stiffens up straight away. That pretty fast. So I'm just going to cook this for two to three minutes and the reason that we're doing that is because for cornstarch to activate I know it looks like it is activated. But to really activate at its full potential we need to cook it for a few minutes so I can see it getting thicker. It's bubbling that's okay. The reason it can bubble to stop egg yolks overcooking in a pudding is because the cornstarch it will stop it from scrambling the eggs.

Remember this has to go into a pie and has to be sliced so we do need it to be thick. There you go lovely and thick. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to turn off that heat. No more direct heat now under this and we're going to add in the remaining ingredients. So here I have bittersweet chocolate in that goes nice and chopped up small. Some vanilla extract which is super important in pudding. Salt and chocolate are best friends and that's what makes this along with the bittersweet chocolate kind of like an adult pudding and then a little bit of butter which gives you a really velvety kind of

finish and a smooth finish. Just whisk those ingredients in. The heat of that pudding is melting the chocolate straight away. Just so you know this is pudding that can be eaten now warm sometimes I eat pudding warm or you can let it go cold and eat it just as is. I'm going to pass it through a sieve. Now what you want to do is just let it sit here for five minutes and let the heat of the pudding melt that chocolate.

The one thing we want to be very careful of is over mixing the filling because what can happen is that it can separate because there's a lot of fat in the chocolate and a lot of fat in the pudding. So let that chocolate just naturally melt itself. Then after a few minutes go in, mix it just until it's combined. So our pudding is ready. Smells so delicious. Let's head over to the counter and push it into our pie crust. So here's the thing what you can do. We're going to pour this pie filling into our crust and it can be warm. That is totally fine. Don't let your pudding hang around in the bowl.

I'll tell you why it forms the skin and it will form it fast. So get it in to your crust. If it does form a skin pass it again through the sieve because you have to remove that you won't get a lovely velvety filling if you don't remove it. The beauty about this is give it a little tap. It already looks beautiful as is. To stop the pie forming a skin now this is what you do when you make creme patisserie or you make lemon curd. Cling wrap directly on the surface not allowing air to get at the pudding and form a skin. Lovely. Let this sit out at room temperature.

Let it cool down a little bit before we transfer it into the fridge. It will set up much firmer in the fridge so if you're worried that it's a little bit runny right now it's not. It goes into the fridge minimum of four hours but preferably overnight it'll be nice and firm for us. You can serve your chocolate pudding pie when the filling has set. To compliment the pie and the bitterness of the chocolate I love to serve it with slightly sweetened whipped cream on top. And just to really add a little bit of extra fanciness I like to add some chocolate shards on top of the cream.

It is soft, the filling is a little bit firmer and the pie crust is crisp. Getting a little spoonful of all of those three together is pure heaven. This pie is definitely for the whole family, kids and adults alike. It might be a little bit on the darker side of the chocolate but trust me they will love it. We are ending on a bang and I saved this one for last because I really think it just screams summer. It is a fresh strawberry pie.

Two crusts, lattice on top, no weave lattice so easy peasy. It's a fun one it just tastes so good. For the filling I have fresh strawberries, please use only fresh don't use frozen or frozen I've been defrosted. It's best to use fresh strawberries for best results. The strawberries that have been frozen might let out too much liquid. Into this we are going to add in some sugar, a little bit of lemon juice and that is to brighten the flavor and that really applies to all fruit. If you're making cobblers and crisps, pies, a little bit of lemon juice to just balance out the flavor of the fruit just really helps. Then we have some corn starch.

Strawberries let out a lot of liquid. So the corn starch inside the pie is going to activate and help to thicken that liquid and stop us ending up with a soupy pie. Salt because we always need a bit of salt. A little bit of vanilla. So here's my secret ingredient when it comes to a strawberry pie or blueberry and something gets very juicy. A granny smith apple. I grate in an apple into the filling and I'll tell you why I do this. Granny smith apples are baking apples or cooking apples and when they cook they get soft but they will also they will absorb the liquid that is coming

out of the strawberries. So you'll end up with a thicker filling. You don't see the apple, you do not taste the apple but it is working because it's really lovely and thick. So it's just a little bit of apple to help thicken and it really does wonders. Feel free to use this tip in other pie recipes with very juicy fruit. And all you have to do is just mix those ingredients together until everything is really well combined. So think of that grated apple almost like a sponge soaking up all of the lovely strawberry juice. Now set that filling over to the side while we prepare our crusts. So this pie has pastry on the top and the bottom so you'll want to double the recipe.

Roll out the base to fit a 9 inch pie pan. Believe it or not it's actually easier to roll out pie crusts when they're colder rather than softer. They move around easily, the butter stays firm so it doesn't stick to your counter. So I know it might seem sometimes like it's too hard to roll out but just give it a minute and it does become easier. So our pastry, a little bit bigger than our pie pan, lovely. Push it down into the pan. This overhang here, keep it for right now. Do not do anything with it. And into this we're going to add in our pie filling.

Just even out the filling. Make sure there's not big lumps of apple in one spot. Pop it over there to the side and roll out the pastry that's going to go on top. So when it comes to a lattice you have to normally do a weave which as long as I've been baking for I just don't have the patience and also I don't do it very well. So rather than trying to do that I decided why not make it work for myself and that's what we should always do right? Make it easy for you. It's supposed to be fun and it's not fun if it's hard and it's giving you trouble and it's breaking on you.

Let's roll out our pastry. So for this second piece roll it out until it's around 13 inches, something like that. And we're going to cut out strips that are around 1 inch thick. You can do a pizza cutter or you can do it with a knife. Do whatever works for you. And use a ruler, here we go again with the ruler, as your guide. The ruler is your best friend right now. So those are all our strips. You do want to move quite quickly so your pastry doesn't get too soft.

Let's start out with the large strips in the middle. Lay them over and give around an inch per lattice. Make sure to save those big long ones for the middle part. And then with the remaining longest in the middle I'm doing around 5 strips. I get around 5 strips on the bottom and I went 5 strips on the top. Now like I said no weave. If this looks like a weave just doing what we did. So lay around 6 on the bottom and then 5 or 6 on top. Whatever you have to work with is totally fine. So there you go. You have a beautiful lattice without having to do a lattice and doing that weaving.

Like why doesn't everybody do this? It's so much easier. And it still looks so good. I'm just going to go and trim the crust around the edges. Now that we have our lattice on, leaving a little bit of overhang still. The worst thing you can do is cut off too much. And then with my fingers I'm just going to go and crimp the edges to make the pastry stick together. Just a little tip when egg washing a lattice, make sure you get every little nook and cranny. It will take you a few more minutes. But you want to make sure everything gets egg washed so it all ends up golden brown. And just be careful to do it gently so

you don't rip any of the pastry. This egg wash is going to help bind the lattice together. And this is optional but if you want you can also sprinkle a little bit of sugar over the top. Okay this is ready to rock and roll. I have the oven nice and hot and a tray preheated so let's get it in there. Place your pie in the oven on a preheated sheet pan to really get the crust a lovely golden brown on the bottom. Bigger pie at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 180 degrees Celsius for roughly around 45 to 50 minutes.

What you're really looking for is the pastry to be a lovely golden brown but most importantly for that filling to bubble. When you know it's bubbling it means that the corn starch is activating, that the fruit and the filling is getting really jammy and it's not going to be watery so keep an eye out for that. We are definitely finishing with a bang. Just look at this beautiful pie bubbling, beautiful golden brown. With a big pie like this you're definitely going to want to let it cool down for a few hours just so it can firm up the center and set a little bit. Without a doubt this pie is a summer show stopper. It features strawberries which is such a bright lovely summer fruit.

The filling is seasonal, it's unique, the crust is five star and the flavor is next level. This is the kind of pie that can be eaten all summer long and because we know we eat with our eyes I guarantee you at any summer gathering this will be the first to go. So that was an epic pie video but I really hope you enjoyed it because it was some of our most favorite summer pies. Thank you so much for watching, let me know in the comments below if you'd like to see more compilations like this and I'll see you back here again really soon.