Sunny Lemon Strawberry Pie

I'm dreaming of spring and summer - anything but the mounds of snow that we have outside today.  It
has been snowing off and on for three days now, and driving today was especially treacherous.

This past fall I was in England and made a trip to Tesco, a UK grocery store, specifically to take a look at their vegan offerings.  I am a follower of Fat Gay Vegan, and he has posted about vegan finds in Tesco, as well as other mainstream UK shops, so I thought I'd do some exploring of my own.  I did find all sorts of interesting vegan items on the shelves.


In the magazine section there was a vegetarian Christmas food magazine that was published by Tesco.  I looked through it in the store before I purchased it to see if there were any vegan recipes in it because if it didn't have any vegan recipes, I would not have bought it: I have no interest in a vegetarian cookbook.

There were a number of amazing vegan recipes in it, including a wonderful nut roast that my sister made for Christmas dinner.

Tucked away in the magazine was a vegan dessert called Creamy Lemon Fruit Squares.  At the time I thought it looked like a summertime dessert, and I set the recipe aside so I could make it for an outside dinner on the deck.  Nevertheless, I decided to make it today, as the snow builds up outside my door.

Although this recipe was originally published by Tesco, I've made a number of changes to it, so I have changed the name of the recipe to reflect my changes.

Crust

Option A: Use a purchased ready-made vegan graham cracker pie crust.  This is what I did.

Option B: Use any slightly sweet, press-in pie crust of your choice, and either place it into an 8 inch pie plate, or into an 8 x 8 in baking dish.

Filling

1 398 ml can of pears packed in water
1 349 g or 12.3 oz box of extra firm silken tofu.  I used Mori-Nu brand but I imagine any extra firm silken tofu will work
1/2 cup of apricot jam
2 table spoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
Zest from two whole medium-large lemons

Sliced fresh or frozen strawberries for the topping

Directions

Preheat your oven to 375 F

Put all of the ingredients for the filling in a food processor, a blender, or in a medium bowl using an immersion blender, and blend all of the filling ingredients until they are smooth.

Pour the mixture into your prepared or purchased crust, and bake in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes.

Allow the pie to cool before putting sliced strawberries on top.  Alternatively, you could slice the strawberries, and put them in a bowl, and then scoop them onto slices of the pie after you have placed  them on individual dishes for serving.  Today I sliced fresh strawberries into a bowl, then sprinkled two tablespoons of sugar over them and let them macerate for a while. This way, they will be nice and juicy when I spoon them over the pie. 

Here is the pie with its strawberry topping - it's like sunshine on a plate!