Possible Cooking Methods: Oven
A slab pie is a great way to serve dessert to a crowd. You can feed 15 to 20 people with this pie! It’s made in a sheet pan, which means there’s more pastry for everyone. Of course, because this is a sheet pan dessert, there’s no air fryer option to make it with these quantities, but you can make a mini pie with a pie pan. While you do have the option of buying frozen pre-made pastry, this pastry recipe is super easy and will give you enough pastry to easily roll it out to fit a half sheet pan – not the case with most store-bought pastry. In addition, the sour cream in this pastry gives it a nice tang next to the strawberry-rhubarb filling. Just remember to make the pastry twice.
Pastry (make this twice):
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the work surface
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
12 ounces unsalted butter, cut into cubes and well-chilled
¾ cup sour cream
Filling:
7 cups sliced rhubarb (½-inch slices)
8 cups sliced hulled strawberries
1½ cups sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup cornstarch
1 egg, lightly beaten
sanding sugar
Cooking Directions for
Strawberry Rhubarb Slab Pie
Oven Directions
Serves:15 to 20
Cooking Time:60 minutes
1. Make the pastry by hand: Mix the flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Use a pastry cutter to cut the cold butter into the flour, or pinch the butter in the flour with your fingers, until it has the consistency of coarse meal.
2. Add the sour cream, pouring it over the flour as evenly as possible. Fold the dough together with your hands or a wooden spoon until you are able to collect it into a dough ball. You may need to add a little water in order to get to this stage, or if the pastry is too wet, add a little flour.
3. Shape the dough into a large rectangle. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before proceeding with the slab pie.
1. Make the pastry using a food processor: Blend the flour, salt, and sugar together in the food processor bowl. Add the butter cubes and pulse together with the flour until the butter chunks in the flour are about the size of peas.
2. Add the sour cream, pouring it over the flour as evenly as possible, and pulse the mixture again to get the dough to come together. You may need to add a little water in order to get to this stage, or if the pastry is too wet, add a little flour.
3. Transfer the dough to a counter lined with plastic wrap, and shape the dough into a large rectangle. Refrigerate the dough for at least thirty minutes before proceeding with the slab pie.
4. Pre-heat the oven to 425°F.
5. Combine the fruit, sugar, salt and cornstarch in a large bowl and toss together. Let this mixture sit while the oven pre-heats and you roll out the pastry.
6. Roll out one batch of pastry into a rectangle a little bigger than a half sheet pan (18-inches by 13-inches), remembering that it needs to be long and wide enough to come up and over the sides of the pan. Transfer the rolled out pastry to the half sheet pan. Allow the edges of the pastry to hang over the sides of the pan and trim to one inch bigger than the pan.
7. Roll out the second batch of pastry into another rectangle about 18-inches by 13-inches in size. Trim this rectangle so that it fits inside the pan perfectly. (If you want to cut a decoration in this top crust, do so now before you place the pastry on top of the fruit.)
8. Stir the fruit again to coat it evenly in the sugar mixture and pour the fruit onto the pastry in the sheet pan, spreading it out evenly. Top the fruit with the second rolled out pastry rectangle. Brush the pastry with egg wash (lightly beaten egg) and fold the bottom crust over the top crust, sealing the edges together by pushing lightly. Brush the pastry edges with more egg wash.
9. Pierce the pastry with a paring knife, making a few small diagonal slits across the pastry dough to allow steam to escape during cooking. You will have extra pastry left over from what you’ve made (it’s much more convenient to have too much pastry than too little!) so decorate the pie by cutting shapes out of the extra pastry and gluing them on top with egg wash. Sprinkle the surface all over with sanding sugar (or granulated sugar if you can’t find sanding sugar). Transfer the pan to the oven.
10. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350°F and continue to bake for another 45 minutes. If at any point the edges of the crust are getting too dark, cover the edges with aluminum foil. The pie is finished when nicely browned on top. Allow the pie to cool for 30 minutes and then cut it into squares and serve.
