Peach and Strawberry Satin Pies

Let's hear it for the successful return of Globe Cookie Wednesday! With the combination of a couple of my friends no longer working (yay for SAHMs!), Mackenzie's new baby now being 2 months old, and Amy hopefully over the worst of her morning sickness, I decided it was high time we got back to making some serious weekly treats around here.

Strawberry Satin pie is perhaps my favorite kind of pie out there, and I like a lot of pie. It's a strawberry glaze pie with a vanilla custard-like filling. I've often wondered how it would taste with other types of fruit, like peaches, so today we tried both. I have to say, the strawberry version is still by far my favorite, but it was fun to try something new!

Strawberry Satin Pie

1 (9 inch) pastry shell, baked
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup Cool Whip (approximate)

1 pound strawberries

1 small packet strawberry instant jello

1) In a saucepan, combine the sugar, flour, cornstarch and salt. Stir in milk until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened (I use a whisk).

2) Remove from the heat. Stir a small amount of hot filling into egg (this tempers the egg; otherwise, your egg would cook in chunks if you added it straight to the pan). Return all to the pan, stirring constantly.

3) Bring to a gentle boil; cook and stir 2 minutes longer. Remove from the heat. Stir in vanilla. Cover with plastic and cool in fridge to room temperature.

4) Whisk in Cool Whip until blended (the amount of Cool Whip I add depends on how stiff I want the filling, or I just taste it until it seems right). Spread in pie shell. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

5) Slice strawberries into pretty 1/4-inch thick slices and arrange on pie.

6) You can use any strawberry glaze method you want (but if you use that tub of gelatinous muck they sell by the berries, I don't want to know!). I've tried several, and my favorite thing to use is actually strawberry freezer jam! When I don't have that, the jello is my next favorite thing, and it's easy. Just prepare the jello as directed, and chill it for a couple hours so it's cool but still pretty runny (you might notice in the peach pie photo above that I let the jello set a little too long before spreading it on the pie!). Then just spoon the jello evenly over the strawberries (you'll only need a small amount; save the rest of the jello for the kids), and refrigerate.