Stars, Stripes and Sadness Pie

Marquette here! I LOVE the 4th of July. Family, food, parades, food, fireworks, food, awesome music, food, flags, food and lots of fun! It's always fun to see the dishes people prepare to celebrate America. Marty found a great picture and recipe for a stars and stripes pie and thought she'd give it a whirl for her 4th of July festivities. 

The Original Pin

http://www.womansday.com/recipefinder/stars-stripes-pie-121895

Doesn't that look amazing?! Oh man, I want to go make pie now. This was Marty's first pie attempt, which I'm rather impressed that she'd do this as her first pie...it would have scared me away to try and make this pie on my first pie making experience. So 100 points to Gryffindor (and Marty) for that. 

Marty tells us "I tried to make this for 4th of July. I followed the recipe exactly with the exception that I used strawberry pie filling instead of cherries because I don't like cherries. I used pie filling from a can and in the amount called for in the recipe. This was my first pie. It looked quite pretty before I put it in the oven. I even made sure I had 13 stripes. I was very excited."

The Pinstrosity

Still not bad. Here's what Marty had to say about it:

"Well, the filling overflowed all over my oven. Clearly, it called for too much filling. Also, as you can see, it doesn't look like the Woman's Day picture. It also didn't taste good. Next time, I will not fill it as full and I will make my own filling. I will try again next year."

I love Marty's resolve. So many of us quit after projects don't turn out quite how we want them to. Way to go Marty. 

So on to dissecting this Pinstrosity. 

• The Pie Filling
• Marty used strawberry pie filling instead of cherry pie filling because she's not a big fan of cherries (which I probably would have done too...not a cherry fan). The only thing that probably affected was the color of the red in the pie; it wasn't as vibrant as the cherries. 
• Like Marty, I think there was too much pie filling. When I read the original recipe I thought, "Holy cow, that's a lot of filling. That'll never fit in a 9" pie pan." I have trouble keeping 1 can of filling from going over the sides of the pie, let alone 3 and a half! I would probably start with one can and then add fresh fruit into it to get the consistency right. That's one of my favorite pie tricks, adding fresh-or frozen sometimes-fruit to the pie filling; it gives a great textures and adds nicely to the flavor of the pie. I especially do this with berry filling (and especially with strawberry filling) since sometimes the canned pie fillings have a funny aftertaste, which may have been Marty's taste issue, I don't know...having not tasted it I can't say what to do about the taste. 
• The crust. 
• I'm just not a fan of pre-made pie crusts. I'm not a fan of the flavor and they are usually thinner than I like them. I know it's easy to just pick one up at the store, but I just have never had great luck with them (I know some have wonderful success stories with them, but not me). I would always suggest making your own crust. It's really easy, and yummy, and you get to make it as thick as you want (I LOVE thick pie crust). 
• Here's the super simple and yummy recipe I love:
  http://mowercooking.blogspot.com/2012/02/pie-crust.html
• It looks like Marty needed a higher crust in her pie to help hold in all the filling. Making your own crust will let you customize things to get the desired effect. The crust around the edges also makes a nice frame for the stars and stripes, pulling the whole design together. And it'll help the stripes not to slip around when baking. What I would do, is to cut the stripes longer than the width of the pie, then lay them over and pinch the edges of the stripes into the crust to help solidify everything. Then after that you could crimp the crust (or do whatever crust design you want). 
• Placing the stripes in line with the blueberries rather than at an angle also might help give more of a flag look to the pie, if that's what your going for. I think Marty's looks fine, but there's another option for the pie.