Lunch: Fruit and Vanilla Cream Pie

Nothing says Happy 4th of July like this chilled patriotic pie, piled high with fresh strawberries and blueberries. I use a pre-made crust for convenience, but you can use any pastry, shortbread or graham cracker crust as the base for the quick-fix custar

Ingredients

1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
1 Tablespoon water
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 1/4 cups cold light cream
1 pre-made or freshly baked 9" pie crust, such as shortbread or graham cracker
1 quart strawberries, quartered
1 pint blueberries

Instructions

Sprinkle the gelatin over 1 tablespoon of cold water in a small bowl. Set aside for 10 minutes.
Put the sugar into a small saucepan then split the vanilla bean in half and scrape it into the sugar. Rub the vanilla bean into the sugar with your fingers until it's well distributed. Add the scraped bean halves to the mixture.
Add one cup of light cream to the sugar mixture and whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Bring the mixture to a boil and then remove it from the heat. Discard the vanilla bean halves and then immediately whisk in the gelatin mixture.
Pour the mixture into a bowl, then set the bowl in a larger bowl of ice water. Stir the custard with a rubber spatula until it begins to thicken, roughly 3 minutes. Whisk in the remaining 1/4 cup of cold light cream.
Pour the mixture into the fully pre-baked pie shell and refrigerate until set, about 90 minutes.
Once the custard is firm, top the pie with the strawberries and blueberries.

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