Please help me with my strawberry pie!

[salichristina]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, and I need help with a strawberry pie that I just made.

The recipe called for a box of gelatin (which I haven't really used outside of making Jello and cakes), so I put in a whole box and continued to follow the recipe. Everything looked and tasted fine, until I went to cut the pie.. It tasted fine, but it was very thick and rubbery. So my question is, can I do anything to make the pie a little less thick? And while I'm here, is there anything I can do to make my pie a little less sweet? Thank you very much for reading!

Sally


Ingredients

2 (8 inch) pie shells, baked
2 1/2 quarts fresh strawberries
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup boiling water
1 (3 ounce) package strawberry flavored gelatin

Directions

In a saucepan, mix together the sugar and corn starch; make sure to blend corn starch in completely. Add boiling water, and cook over medium heat until mixture thickens. Remove from heat. Add gelatin mix, and stir until smooth. Let mixture cool to room temperature.

Place strawberries in baked pie shells; position berries with points facing up. Pour cooled gel mixture over strawberries.

Refrigerate until set. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

 

[Hoot]

Howdy!
Welcome to D.C.!
Now, I ain't a pie expert, by no means, but I have made a few.
You got a lot of thickeners in there!
Cornstarch is a thickening agent, so is the gelatin.
I suspect that the berries have some pectin which is also a thickening agent, 'Course all of the above requires heat to work.
I would start by reducing or eliminating the gelatin. You will likely need to extend the cooking time in order for the cornstarch to work its magic. Cornstarch needs to boil to serve as a thickener...the longer the boil, the thicker it gets.
I have seen recipes that call for gelatin but have never used it in a pie. We have good results with just the cornstarch, but it will take a little longer cooking.
I am certain there will be someone along with better advice or explanations.
Good cooks abound here...Again, Welcome!

 

[Hoot]

Upon further ponderin', it occurs to me that you might want to take a portion of the strawberries, say about half..and chop them fairly fine to use when you begin to make the filling. Save the rest for addition after the filling is to your liking, thicknesswise, slicing or cutting in half all but a few that you can use to go on top.
As far as the sweetness goes, you can reduce the amount of sugar to suit your taste. If the gelatin you used was pre-sweetened, eliminating the gelatin will get rid of that much sugar as well. It might take a few turns to get it like you want it.
Good luck!
Let us know how it turns out.

 

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

Premium Strawberry Pie:

One pie shell
4 cups of hulled and washed fresh strawberries
2 cups strawberry pie glaze, or straberry freezer jam
1/2 tsp. cinamon

Blind bake the pie shell until lightly browned. Pile strawberries in the cooked and cooled pie shell. Mix the cinamon and strawberry glaze, or freezer jam and pour it over the strawberries. Allow the glaze or freezer jam to fill the pie shell. Top with Chantilly Cream (Whipped cream flavored with vanila and sugar). Lightly dust the top with a little more cinamon and serve.

There are many kinds of scrumptious strawberry pies, some that are baked, some that are refrigerated, some that are blended into cheesecake fillings, etc. Each has its own method of preperation, and all are very good. The recipe I gave you gets high points for intense strawberry flavor, and an amazing, and tempting presentation.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

 

[justplainbill]

It should soften up if you let it warm up.
1 1/2 tbs of tapioca flour in the filling for each pie should be sufficient to thicken juices from strawberries, if you choose to bake covered pies..