American Flag July 4th Pie

A sheet pan filled with a flag pie made with strawberries, blueberries, and pie crust.

5 from 5 votes

Bake an American Flag Pie, the ultimate July 4th dessert. It's great for parties! This patriotic slab pie serves up to 20 people for Summer cookouts, BBQs, and picnics. To get the flag shape, this fruit pie is baked in a large sheet pan. Use homemade or store-bought crusts. I have both blueberry and strawberry filling recipes for you or try cherry pie fillings. A party-sized dessert pie will be the star of your Independence Day celebration, Happy 4th of July.

Prep Time30

Cook Time45

Total Time1 15

Course: Desserts & Sweets

Cuisine: American

Keyword: American flag pie, flag pie, sheet pan pie, slab pie

Servings:

Calories: 256kcal

Author: Lisa Hatfield

Equipment

Ingredients

5 pie crusts 4 pie crusts - for the bottom crust and 1 pie crust for stars and stripes
¼ cup fine sugar

Blueberry Pie Filling

2 cups fresh blueberries 1 pint
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon tapioca flour
1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest

Strawberry Pie Filling

2 quarts fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered (8 cups; 4 - 16 oz boxes)
½ cup sugar
4 teaspoons tapioca flour
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Homemade Pie Crust

Sift all dry ingredients; flour, sugar, and salt. Cut the butter with a pastry blender or cutter into the mixture (or use 2 knives going in opposite directions). Next, add ice water and form into a ball, mixing with your hands until it comes together. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap, in two halves and chill for 60 minutes.
Prepare the large sheet pans or large cookie sheets. Lightly spray one sheet pan with coconut nonstick spray, and line the other with baking parchment paper. Make sure they will fit in your fridge to chill the dough before baking.

Blueberry Pie Filling

Rinse the blueberries in cold water, in a medium bowl mix the blueberries, sugar, tapioca flour, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Set aside, and keep the blueberry filling separate from the strawberry filling.

Strawberry Pie Filling

Rinse the strawberries in cold water and pull stems using a straw, push from the bottom of the strawberry to pop the stem off the top. Cut the strawberries half.
In a large bowl, add the cut strawberries and mix in the sugar, tapioca flour, salt, lemon juice and lemon zest. Set aside, and keep the strawberry filling separate from the blueberry filling.

Bottom Crust

On a floured work surface, roll out pie crusts with a rolling pin, lay them on the sprayed sheet pan and piece together four crusts to form a larger piece of pastry for one bottom crust. As you work, fit them into the large sheet pan which is your pie dish. You can bake in a regular 9" round pie plate pan and make a smaller version, but this makes a lot of filling so it will most likely bake two pies.
Use a sharp knife or pizza wheel to cut pieces and patch together the excess dough to make a full bottom crust. Gently press them together and up the sides of the pan.
Use a fork to poke small holes (aka docking) all over the bottom crust of the sheet pan, this helps the crust lay flat during the pre-bake or blind-bake as it is called. Sprinkle fine sugar on the bottom crust. Chill that crust in the fridge until ready to bake. Heat the oven to 425 degrees.

Stars and Stripes

Use the 5th pie crust to cut 25 small stars out with a 1" star shaped small cookie cutter. Using a clean ruler, lay it on the crust and use a knife or pizza wheel to cut 3 short stripes the width of the ruler and 9" long wide strips for the stripes of the flag.
Reroll the dough using the scraps, and use a clean ruler, lay it on the pie dough and cut with a knife, pizza cutter, or pastry wheel 3 long strips the width of the ruler and 16" long.
Lay all the stars and stripes on the parchment lined baking sheet as you go, and sprinkle with fine sugar. If possible, re-chill your cut stars and stripes in the fridge prior to baking on the sheet pans for an hour.
If large sheet pans don't fit in your fridge, set the pans on ice packs to keep the pie dough as cold as possible before baking. Pie crust bakes properly when very chilled going into a hot oven which helps bake a flaky crust.

Baking

Bake both the bottom crust and the stars and stripes at 425 degrees for 15 minutes until the crusts are just turning golden brown. Pull both pie crusts out of the oven. Leave the oven heat on.
On the bottom pie crust, spread blueberry filling into the upper left corner in a small rectangle of the baked pie crust for the blue part of the flag. Next, add the strawberry filling onto the pie. (Don't add the stars and stripes yet)
Bake the bottom crust and filling at 425 for 25-30 minutes, until the berries are bubbling.

Decorating & Serving

Now finish decorating, place the baked stars on top of the blueberry section, add the 3 shorter stripes to the right of the blueberries, and the 3 longer stripes on the strawberries at the bottom of the pie. Your pie is done!
Serve with whip cream and or vanilla ice cream.

Notes

Docking

Poking holes in pie dough, crackers, flatbread, or unbaked pastry are called docking. This technique helps the steam that builds up during baking escape, so the baked dough stays even and flat and doesn't puff up as it is baked.

Preventing Soggy Pie Crust

No one wants a soggy bottom pie crust where the filling makes the crust all wet and gooey, yuck. Here is why it happens, and ideas to help you!.

Fruit

Use fresh, not overripe, or frozen fruit in baked pies. Overripe or frozen fruit releases a lot of water while baking.

Blind Baking

Blind baking helps the crust to bake evenly and keeps the crust from getting soggy by pre-baking without the filling.

Brush Blind-Baked Crust With Fruit Preserves

These can be brushed on the blind-baked pie crust to seal it from the fruit juices from the filling. Simply brush prebaked crust, and then add your filling before final baking.

Pie Filling Thickeners

Use a thickener, such as flour, cornstarch, potato starch, or tapioca flour. Baking fruit pies pulls water out of the fruit into the pie. Flour and cornstarch will help thicken the filling but makes the filling cloudy. Use potato starch for a clear filling. Corn starch needs to be heated in the filling in order to work as a pie thickener, it is a chemical reaction while cooking.

Sugar On Pie Crust

By sprinkling sugar on pie crust, it does two things..one it sweetens the crust, and second, gives it a nice crunch. My Mom always finished her pies this way, and so do I. It is optional but really nice.

Nutrition