If you can’t tell, I am all about baking with berries right now. Or no-baking with them, in this case.
That’s right! This lush pink strawberry pie is a completely oven-free operation. It’s cold and creamy with huge strawberry flavor, and just enough chocolate to please anyone who says they don’t like fruit desserts. This is a recipe you’ll be delighted to have in the warmer months. Anything to keep the oven off, right?
No-Bake Strawberry Cream Pie starts with an Oreo crumb crust filled with dark chocolate ganache AKA a “black bottom.” Fresh strawberries are pressed into the chocolate for flavor an texture, though you can skip this particular adornment if you need to make the pie more than a day in advance.
Next up is the titular strawberry cream. I’m sure there are plenty of ways to do this by reducing fresh strawberries, but I took the easy way out and opted for freeze-dried. They’re my go-to for strawberry-flavored desserts; they’re always excellent quality, and I love that they can be crushed and added to anything for a hefty hit of fresh berry flavor. Here, they’re pulverized and mixed with cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar and vanilla before being lightened with fresh whipped cream. In addition to providing the flavor in the filling, the freeze-dried berries also give our pie the most vibrant pink color! I just love it.
As with many no-bake pies, this one needs a chill to set up properly. I prefer to plan ahead and chill overnight, but you can get away with three hours if you’re in a bind. Once the chill time is up, spoon or pipe whipped cream over the top and finish with fresh strawberries. ‘Tis the season after all.
No-Bake Strawberry Cream Pie
makes one 9-inch pie
Oreo Crust:
24 Oreos
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
Ganache Layer:
4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup heavy cream
~8 ounces (1/2 box) fresh strawberries, trimmed & quartered
Filling:
2 1.2 ounce packages freeze dried strawberries
1 1/3 cup heavy cream, very cold
8 ounces (1 brick) full-fat brick-style cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
pinch of Kosher or sea salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Topping:
3/4 cup heavy cream, very cold
2-3 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5-6 fresh strawberries, thinly sliced
Place Oreos in the bowl of a food processor and blitz until they are crumbs. Add melted butter and pulse until the mixture can be pinched together. Press it into the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate. Refrigerate for 15 minutes to set.
Make the ganache. Combine chopped chocolate and heavy cream in a small microwave-safe bowl. Heat in 15 second increments, stirring in between, until a smooth even ganache forms (about 45 seconds total). Pour it into the crust and use the back of a spoon to carefully spread it into an even layer on the bottom. Top with quartered fresh strawberries. Refrigerate crust and ganache while you prepare the filling. If making the pie more than a day in advance, skip adding the fresh strawberries. They may lose their freshness over a long period.
Place freeze dried strawberries in a food processor and process until they are powder, about 30 seconds. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to whip heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Do not overwhip. Set aside.
In a separate large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to beat strawberry powder, cream cheese, and confectioner’s sugar until combined and fluffy. Use a silicone spatula or wooden spoon to stir in 1/3 of the whipped cream. Working in 2 installments, carefully fold in remaining whipped cream until combined. Transfer to chilled pie crust and use a silicone spatula to spread to the edges. Press plastic wrap to the top. Chill for 3 hours or overnight.
Make whipped cream topping. In a medium-large mixing bowl, combine heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. Use an electric mixer to whip cream until stiff peaks form. If you want to pipe, load it into a piping bag fitted with a star tip. Remove pie from the refrigerator and discard plastic wrap. Spoon or pie whipped cream over the top. Finish with sliced fresh strawberries.
Slice and serve. Leftover pie will keep covered in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
Christmas in a pandemic is so strange. I mean, I’ve spent Christmas away from my immediate family before, but it’s always been with (ex-)boyfriends or friends. But this year, traveling and gathering don’t seem like great plans and I am deeply single, so Christmas alone it is.
I’ve already had my pre-Christmas anticipatory-loneliness gloom and doom, and have now moved on to determining what will make this Christmas feel like…Christmas. Like, when I FaceTime my family, I’m going to wear my Christmas pajamas that match my sisters. And I’m going to take a walk. Maybe watch Love Actually for the 374th time. Perhaps make a pot roast. And I’m going to eat chocolate-covered pecans by the handful. It’s the Davenport way.
Chocolate-Covered Pecans have a 
Since my sisters and I all moved away, we’ve each been added to my dad’s chocolate-covered pecan Christmas list. It’s something I look forward to every year—my tin showing up a week or two before I fly home for the holiday break. Except, of course, that I’m not flying home this year. And for a brief moment, thanks to the notorious difficulties with shipping right now, I thought that my dad might have decided not to send chocolate-covered pecans in 2020.
Thankfully that is not the case and my tin arrived on December 16th, but in that moment where I thought this tradition might be another casualty of 2020, I took the time to create my own recipe for Chocolate-Covered Pecans. I certainly wasn’t going to go without them. No way.
My Chocolate-Covered Pecans are the tiniest spin on my 
Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Whatever you do or don’t celebrate, I hope you find a way to enjoy the end of this challenging year. I’m taking Friday off for Christmas, but will be back next week with year-end round ups. Stay cozy, everyone.
I questioned my sanity while making these Little Pumpkin Pie Jars earlier this week—do we need a 
That said, we might need eight pies, but little ones in mason jars that require no baking—perfect for a Thanksgiving with all the trimmings and all the COVID precautions. Little Pumpkin Pie Jars are just the ticket.
This recipe is nearly a carbon copy of the 
Little Pumpkin Pie Jars get their autumnal flavor from the 
But you know what is happy—er, what is making me happy? This Easy Stovetop Peanut Butter Granola. It’s super crisp, crunchy and peanut buttery, and took fifteen whole minutes to make. That’s the magic of stovetop granola. When you skip the oven, it takes 1/3 of the time! Oh, and it only makes a quart. Add this to the list of 
This isn’t my first go-round with 
Combine the wet ingredients. Whisk your oil, brown sugar, maple syrup, natural peanut butter, vanilla, cinnamon and salt together in a measuring cup. This provides the majority of the flavor in your granola and help it get good and crispy.
Toast the dry ingredients. Combine your oats and chopped peanuts in a heavy pan over medium heat. Stir them around for about 10 minutes, until fragrant and a little darker in color. Don’t burn ‘em.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Pour your peanut butter/maple/brown sugar/oil mixture into the oats and peanuts.
Cool. Scatter your granola on a rimmed baking sheet on a rack and let it come to room temperature. This is the part where your granola gets real good and crispy while you decide how you want to serve it. I highly recommend yogurt, raspberries and an artful drizzle of peanut butter.
You may notice that Easy Stovetop Peanut Butter Granola isn’t particularly cluster-prone. This doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but if you are a cluster person, you can reduce the oats and peanuts down to three cups total volume and keep everything else the same. Alternatively, swap the maple syrup for a thicker sweetener like honey or brown rice syrup, and maybe bump it up to 5-6 tablespoons. Either of those should work some clustering magic.
These Little Lemon Pie Jars are are the best no-bake dessert I’ve had in quite some time. They’re cold, creamy and tangy, but not overly rich, and their single-serve presentation makes them ideal for any socially-distanced gathering during these hotter months.
Little Lemon Pie Jars are incredibly simple to make. The lemon filling is made with a fluffy combination of cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar, whipped cream, and my favorite 
Once the curd is made and cooled, the filling takes all of ten minutes to mix and spoon over the crust. Oooh, this crust. While the lemon filling is plenty sweet and refreshing on its own, the crust provides textural contrast and cuts the richness.
Simply mix up some graham cracker crumbs, confectioner’s sugar, a pinch of salt and melted butter until everything is lightly moistened, then press the mixture into the bottoms of eight small mason jars. It won’t set hard, instead staying a little on the crumbly side. Where this wouldn’t work particularly well for a traditional pie, it works like a dream here. I love that I can dig my spoon into the bottom of the jar and get a little crust in every bite.
You can garnish these little pies however you like or not at all. I’ve been saying some version of this a lot lately, but it’s the truth: we’re in a pandemic and there are no dessert rules. I dressed these pictured pie jars up with whipped cream, teensy lemon wedges and extra drizzles of lemon curd for their glamour shots, but I ate the leftovers plain out of the fridge and they were just as delicious. 
e2 bakes brooklyn 