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(gentle music)
(distorted video game dialogue)
Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of Arcade with Alvin.
Today I'll be attempting to make the strawberry pie
from Celeste, one of the best indie games ever made.
Throughout the game, you collect strawberries,
and if by the end of the game you have collected over 150,
you get a wonderful epilogue scene showcasing
a magnificent version of a strawberry pie
with strawberry ice cream,
whipped cream on the crust, and wings.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
So let's get started.
We're gonna go ahead and make some
strawberry ice cream from scratch.
I have here 12 ounces of strawberries
and once the tops have been removed,
these get cut up into little chunks
and combined with about three ounces of granulated sugar.
And these are allowed to sit
and macerate one hour at room temperature
just so that the juices can come out.
Once everything's looking nice and juicy,
we're gonna remove those macerated strawberries
and immersion blend them until they become a puree.
But don't worry, all that juicy delicious
strawberry sugar liquid is going to be used later.
The strawberry puree gets combined
with two and a half cups of heavy cream,
one and a half cups of whole milk,
six ounces of sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla
and half teaspoon of kosher salt.
And as per Andrew suggestion,
a tablespoon of vodka just to make sure that
the ice crystals don't actually end up forming too strong.
Thanks, dude.
This gets blended together, mixed until smooth
and set in the fridge to cool.
While that chills in the fridge,
we're gonna go ahead and get started
on the strawberry pie filling.
The ice cream batch had around 30 strawberries in it,
so this batch will have 120.
These also get their tops removed
and chopped into same rough chunks.
I'm not sure if somebody has invented
the most efficient way to cut
and chop strawberries like other vegetables,
but I have found the best way for me is to just
go at it with a knife and pray for the best.
Once these are separated,
I'm reserving one third of these for later.
In a small bowl, I'm combining 25 grams of sugar
and one third of cup of corn starch.
In goes a half cup of water
and whisk until slurry-ish.
Onto the stove.
In a medium sauce pan over medium heat
we're gonna cook two thirds
of those strawberries we cut up earlier.
In goes 150 grams of sugar,
a half a teaspoon of kosher salt,
the juice of half of a lemon
and proceed to mash and cook this
until it starts to bubble.
Once it's simmering in goes the cornstarch slurry
and this mixture will get cooked
for another two to three minutes until thickened.
In the final minute of cooking,
throw in those one third reserved strawberries
from earlier just to add some texture to the pie filling.
This gets transferred into a metal bowl for quicker cooling
and sent to the fridge
to keep our ice cream mixture company.
While those will inevitably take a long time to chill,
we're gonna get started on our pie dough.
I'm starting by cutting up four sticks
of cold butter into thin little slices.
Super satisfying.
Now into the stand mixer goes 600 grams
of all-purpose flour, a tablespoon of kosher salt,
and all of this wonderful butter mixed together
until the butter chunks are no larger
than the size of a blueberry.
With the mixer running on low,
slowly add around 175 to 225 grams of ice cold water.
I added a little bit too much water this time,
but no worries.
I'm gonna stick this on the board
and add a little bit of extra flour as I'm kneading
and pressing it just to help it absorb a bit.
The dough gets divided into two portions,
one that is 50% larger than the other,
shaped into disks and wrapped with plastic wrap
and sent again to chill in the fridge.
Fridge is really putting its work in today.
What I really like about stuff that involves a lot of time
in the fridge is that it leaves more time for video games.
Shout out to science.
This beautiful silky ice cream mixture
that has now gotten a little bit thicker and smoother
goes into a nice ice cream machine
and run for about 45 minutes
just until it looks like soft serve. Nice.
After the dough has chilled for at least one hour,
this gets removed from the fridge
and flattened out to ready to roll.
But first, we must address the issue of the wings
found in this strawberry pie.
White chocolate would've been an obvious choice,
but white candy melts do have that more cartoon-like
white color that we were looking for.
These are just some nice silicone molds we got off Amazon,
so we melt these in the microwave
according to package instructions
and this again goes into the fridge.
Shout out fridge.
Back to the dough.
Each disc gets rolled out to roughly
a quarter to one sixth of an inch in thickness.
I can't tell so it's gonna have to be
a quarter I'm guessing.
but the larger one will serve as the base of the pie.
We're gonna roll the south end,
patch any scraps, re-roll it,
and we're gonna line this in a ten inch spring form pan.
Once the dough has been lined and evenly pressed
I like to use a little mug
with straight edges to get that smooth look.
A fun way to get rid of those dough scraps
is to just simply use a rolling pin along the top of it.
That'll neatly just press off any of that excess dough,
but save those scraps.
Don't throw them away.
We're gonna use those later.
Now that our strawberry filling has cooled and set thickly,
this gets satisfyingly set
and spread inside the bottom of this pie pan.
Now we move on to the lattice.
Overlapping one way, then doing the other.
Then kind of lifting and folding over under,
a lot of YouTube videos out there that show this
if you really wanna learn how to do it,
I've done it a lot.
So it comes second nature to me.
After crimping the lattice edges to the sides of the pie,
this gets a quick egg wash on top to help with browning
and goes into a 425 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
Once it starts to turn golden,
the oven temperature reduces to about 350 degrees
and cooks for roughly an hour.
This one baked for about an hour and a half.
Once that cools a little bit at room temperature,
we're gonna set that back in the fridge
so that it can chill and let the filling really set
so we get nice slices.
Thank you fridge.
This is what I like to do with
any leftover pie scraps after making pie.
Take all of them, no matter if they're warm, soft, cold,
mush them together into a giant ball.
And once it's smooth, roll it out
with a little bit of extra flour
because chances are a little bit of the butter
has leaked out.
Once it's into a nice round shape,
could be square could be rectangular,
try to get it even.
I like to brush it with the remainder of the egg wash,
used for probably the thing that you used on the pie.
So this just goes on.
Make a little cinnamon sugar mixture,
one part cinnamon to four parts sugar
and sprinkle this evenly over the top.
Be generous because this is going to be delicious.
Don't forget a little bit of salt at the end
because all sweet things do benefit
from a little bit of salt.
Now, from one end to the other,
slightly roll the pastry
until you get essentially a pie dough log.
I like to take this a step further,
wrap it in saran wrap and again throw it into the fridge.
We're not gonna talk about this.
Once the tube has firmed up,
we're gonna take this out, trim the edges.
I'm gonna slice roughly half inch thick cookies.
These are going to be dipped in the remainder
of the cinnamon sugar on each side.
Spread onto a baking tray and baked for about 15 minutes
until they have puffed.
Essentially making mini cinnamon roll cookies.
Just to add a little bit of visual flare.
We're gonna combine probably three tablespoons
of powdered sugar to a teaspoon of water,
or just until thickened.
Drizzled on top, and there you have it,
little cinnamon roll cookies made from the scraps
of your pie which you can definitely feed to
a lot of people if you have around,
or yourself, I won't judge.
We're in the home stretch,
so we're gonna make the garnishes now.
One and a half cups of heavy cream,
whipped or immersion blended until soft peaks
with a tablespoon of powdered sugar.
This gets transferred into a pastry bag
using the mug technique and again set in the fridge.
For the strawberry garnishes on top
I decided to give them a little shiny jacket
through the means of brushing a little bit of simple syrup,
Justin till glossy.
I want to give a special shout out to Riz
from chocolates and chai.com who has made a beautiful
and model like looking pie from Celeste,
a recipe and execution that we heavily admire
and will take some inspiration from.
Thank you, Riz.
And we begin piping a reverse shell like pattern
with the whipped cream all along the edge of the pie.
I usually like having cake stands for this that can rotate
because that makes the job so much easier
when you don't have to walk around
the entire table four times.
We're gonna take our ice cream
that has been frozen overnight
and scoop some nice scoops onto the middle of our pie.
This gets adorned with those glossy
shiny strawberries in a loose pattern.
And for the final touch our wings have now set
so they're now ready to be released
and fly right onto the middle of our pie.
And there you have it.
Our take on the strawberry pie from Celeste
with 150 strawberries collected by the epilogue.
I'm a fan of beautiful things
everywhere and anywhere in life,
and I have to say this definitely makes that list.
Of course, the visual inspiration
from Riz's recipe was huge.
So again, thank you for that.
But does it taste as good as it looks?
Or even similarly, after taking a nice slice or so
before the ice cream melts completely, we dig in
and I am both surprised and also not surprised
that this tastes pretty darn amazing.
Homemade pie crust really is something
that is always underrated,
but when you combine that with
an intensely fruity strawberry filling,
homemade strawberry ice cream
and a touch of whipped cream,
this is definitely a pie
that I feel like would be celebrated over.
Some might call it a symphony of flavors.
People from the BCU also seem to agree,
as they they dig in as well.
I'm wondering though, what happens
if we made this with 149 strawberries?
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(gentle music)