Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

This strawberry cheesecake pie is one of my most favorite spring desserts ever! It is the perfect spring treat for anyone, anywhere. Whether you’re celebrating Mother’s Day, a birthday, or bringing a crowd pleasing dessert to dinner, this is the one!

This strawberry cheesecake pie is so creamy and rich, inside the most perfectly flaky pie crust, AND is topped with a yummy graham cracker streusel! It definitely requires a few additional steps to create this cheesecake pie, but you can break them up over the course of a few days, and it’ll come together in a flash!

What You’ll Need

Equipment

• Food scale
• Mixing bowls
• Rolling pin
• Bench scraper
• Whisk
• Parchment paper
• 9-inch pie plate
• Pie weights such as uncooked rice or dried beans
• Fine mesh sieve
• Blender

Ingredients for Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

• All purpose flour
• Granulated sugar
• Salt (preferably kosher salt)
• Unsalted butter
• Ice cold water
• Fresh or frozen strawberries
• Lemon
• Corn starch
• Graham crackers
• Cream Cheese
• Eggs
• Sour cream
• Heavy whipping cream
• Vanilla extract

How To Make Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

Make Pie Crust

The foundation of a successful Strawberry Cheesecake Pie is a good pie crust, literally. It not only holds the delicious filling in place, but its buttery, tender, and flaky profile makes this pie a real winner! The star of this pie is definitely the luscious chocolate filling, but if paired with a tough, chewy, and thin, flake-less crust, it can never shine as bright!

This is why I’ve written an entire blog post on how to make the most flaky and tender homemade pie crust! And once you get the hang of it, it’s SO simple and easy!

Split up your work flow: Whenever I’m making a dessert I like to plan ahead (when possible!) and break down the steps as much as possible to make for an easier and cleaner work flow. Some recipes like brownies or certain cookies don’t require too many steps, so they don’t need much planning. But desserts like pies and pavlovas include many steps that may make the recipe seem intimidating or too complicated at first. This is why I like to split up the work to at least 2 days:

• First day: make pie dough and chill it in the fridge overnight, or up to 3 days.
• Second day: roll out dough and blind bake pie crust. Whisk together the filling ingredients, pour into pie crust, and bake. This last step could’ve been extended to a third day is desired.

Splitting up your work like this not only makes everything easier and faster, but it leaves you with a lot less mess!

Make the Strawberry Swirl Sauce

Delicious and easy to make, I make this sauce the night before to make things easier. It chills in the fridge until I need it and there’s always a little extra for drizzling over yogurt and ice cream!

Combine the ingredients in a medium saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally and breaking up the strawberry pieces. Cook until slightly thickened, and then stream in the corn starch slurry. Cook for another minute, blend mixture in a blender, then strain through a sieve.

Prep the Graham Cracker Streusel

Cheesecake + graham crackers are like best friends, so I could not leave graham crackers out of this recipe! I created this awesome and easy graham cracker streusel recipe to compliment the creamy strawberry cheesecake!

Mix together the ingredients and squeeze together to create large clumps. Place bowl in freezer before using.

Blind Bake Pie Crust

This Strawberry Cheesecake Pie calls for blind baking the pie crust first. Unlike apple pies, pies with a wet custard-like filling require you to “blind bake” the pie crust first. This means that the pie crust is a fully baked shell before the filling is poured in and then baked again.

To blind bake the crust, roll the dough out bigger than your pie plate. Then place the dough into the plate and crimp the edges to sit firmly on top of the pie plate lip all around the edges. Place parchment paper or aluminum foil in the crust and fill with pie weights. I like using a mix of uncooked rice and small dried beans. Use enough pie weights to fill up the entire pie crust, all the way to the top. This helps the crust keep its shape and keep from shrinking.

Bake the crust at a high temperature (425 degrees F) for about 20 minutes, until the edges are golden. Remove from oven, carefully remove pie weights, poke holes into the bottom of the crust, and bake for an additional 25 minutes at 350 degrees F until the entire crust is golden brown.

Make the strawberry cheesecake filling

Cheesecake filling is sooo easy to make! Just make sure your cream cheese is at room temperature and you’re ready to go!

Cream room temperature cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Add salt. Then, mix in egg and yolk, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Mix in sour cream, then heavy cream and vanilla.

Assemble + Bake

Lower the oven temp to 325 degrees F. Then, pour half the cheesecake filling into the baked pie shell, drizzle a layer of the strawberry sauce on top. Pour the rest of the cheesecake filling on top, then drizzle more strawberry sauce on top and swirl it around to make a pretty pattern. Get graham cracker streusel from the freezer and break apart into smaller clumps to sprinkle over the edge of the cheesecake, leaving a window in the middle to reveal some of the swirl pattern. Bake for about an hour, let cool completely, then chill in the fridge for at least 6 hours and enjoy!

Other Recipes You Might Like!

Nutella Chocolate Chess Pie
Asparagus Mushroom Galettes
Blood Orange Cheesecake Tart

Yield: 1 9-inch pie

Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

Prep Time: 2 hours

Cook Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 3 hours

The combination of two of my favorite things-- cheesecake and pie! A super creamy cheesecake with tangy strawberry swirl, topped with a buttery graham cracker streusel sit inside a perfectly flaky pie crust!

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Ingredients

For pie dough

• 1/2 of my flaky pie dough recipe

For strawberry swirl

• 1 lb fresh or frozen strawberries
• 2 tb granulated sugar
• zest and juice from 1 lemon
• 1 tb water
• 2 tsp corn starch

For graham cracker streusel

• 1/4 c (1/2 stick or 56g) unsalted butter, melted, slightly cooled
• 1/2 c graham cracker crumbs
• 1/4 c (33g) all purpose flour
• 1/3 c (66g) brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

For cheesecake filling

• 1 1/3 c (300g, 11oz) full fat cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/3 c (66g) granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 large egg + 1 yolk
• 1/4 c (62g) sour cream
• 1/4 c (60g) heavy whipping cream
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Prep Pie Dough

1. Make 1/2 the flaky pie crust recipe at least 2 hours before planning to bake, or overnight

Make strawberry swirl sauce

1. In a medium saucepan, combine strawberries, sugar, and lemon zest and juice. Cook over low-medium heat, stirring occasionally and breaking up the strawberry pieces.
2. When mixture is bubbly and slightly thickened, combine water and cornstarch in a small bowl, mixing to dissolve corn starch, then stream into the saucepan while mixing. Cook for another minute or so until thickened.
3. Let mixture cool until safe enough to put in blender. Blend it up until smooth, then push mixture through a fine mesh sieve. Set aside or store covered in fridge until needed.

Blind bake pie crust

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Remove chilled dough from fridge, unwrap, and place on a well floured surface. Start rolling out the dough, picking it up and turning it a few degrees after every few rolls to prevent sticking. Sprinkle flour on the top of the dough as needed. Roll out dough to about 1/8 inch thick circle. Flip over your pie plate and hold it over the dough to make sure the dough has at least a 1 inch excess border all around.
2. Gently place the dough into the pie plate. Without stretching the dough, fit it into the plate, gently pressing it into the bottom of the plate. Tuck the excess border under itself so that it's sitting on top of the lip of the pie plate and press down gently, doing the same all around the border. Then with your thumb and fingers, crimp the edges (look at photos above). Place entire pie pan into the freezer for about 10-15 minutes.
3. After dough has been chilled, take a piece of parchment paper that is larger than the pie plate, crinkle it into a ball and then flatten out again (this makes it more malleable). Place parchment paper on top of the chilled dough, pressing it slightly into the pie plate then fill with pie weights ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP, spreading the weights around with your hands to make sure it's gotten into all the crevices.
4. Place pie plate on top of the baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the edges are catching a golden color. Remove from oven and lower the temperature to 350°F. Carefully bunch up the corners of the parchment paper and lift the weights out of the pie dough (be careful-- weights will be HOT) and place into a large bowl.
5. Using a fork or knife, poke vent holes all over the bottom of the pie dough and place back into oven and bake for an additional 25 minutes, until the entire pie crust is cooked and golden brown all over. Remove from oven and set crust aside to cool slightly.

Make graham cracker streusel

1. Melt butter and let cool slightly.
2. Add graham cracker crumbs, flour, brown sugar, and salt. Mix well to combine and squeeze into big clumps that hold together. Place in freezer to chill.

Make cheesecake filling

1. Lower oven heat to 325°F.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment, mix cream cheese on low for a minute to smooth out. Add sugar and mix on medium speed until smooth, then add salt.
3. Add the egg and yolk and mix to combine well. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
4. Mix in sour cream, then heavy cream and vanilla. Scrape down sides of the bowl again and mix on medium for 30 seconds to make sure everything is mixed well.

Assemble + Bake

1. Pour half the cheesecake mixture into the pie shell. Drizzle a layer of the strawberry sauce on top. Top with the rest of the cheesecake filling. Dot and drizzle more strawberry sauce on top, then with knife, swirl the sauce into the cheesecake filling to create a swirl pattern.
2. Get streusel from freezer and break into smaller clumps and sprinkle on top, mostly around the edges, keeping a bit of the middle clear to show the swirl design.
3. Bake for 55-65 minutes, until the edges are set, but middle is still jiggly, but not watery/sloshy. Remove from oven and let cool completely. Chill in fridge for at least 6 hours before serving.