Easy Strawberry Pie

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a pie or tart pan with oil and dust it a little with flour. Set aside.

Combine flour, butter (diced), sugar, water, the egg yolk and a generous pinch of salt in a bowl. Knead with your hands until everything comes together into a smooth dough.

Either press the dough into your pie/tart pan directly with your fingers or roll it out on a surface that you’ve dusted with flour. Either way, make sure to press it into every corner of the pan.

Cover the dough surface with some parchment paper and top the parchment with some rice or dried lentils/beans or pie weights. Blind bake the pie shell for about 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove the beans and parchment towards the end (last 5 minutes).

Meanwhile: In a small saucepan heat 1 1/2 cups of the milk over medium heat.

While that is heating, mix the remaining 1/2 cup of milk with the vanilla extract, 3-4 tablespoons of sugar (depending on how sweet you want the custard) and 2 tablespoons cornstarch until there are no lumps.

Combine the vanilla mixture into the hot milk and whisk while it keeps heating up (constant whisking is really important so the custard doesn’t burn). As soon as the texture becomes like mayonnaise you can remove the custard from the heat. Cover with clingfilm and set aside.

Remove the pie shell from the oven and let it cool for about 5 minutes. Fill it with as much custard as possible and let it cool completely.

In the meantime, wash the strawberries and cut them in a half or in slices.

As soon as the pie shell with the custard has cooled down, decorate it with the strawberries.

Mix 4 tablespoons of the strawberry or raspberry juice with 1 tablespoon of potato starch.

Bring the rest of the juice to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove it from the heat and add the starch mixture. Heat it up while whisking until it boils again (it should have thickened by now). Remove from the stove and glaze the easy strawberry pie with it immediately.

Let it cool before serving.