SRC: Patriotic Fruit Pie

Despite all of the warnings, I waited until almost the last minute to make my dish for the Secret Recipe Club this month. Since our posting date for group A fell right after the 4th of July and I knew my mom was going to have a pool party on the 6th, it only seemed fitting to choose a patriotic dessert and bring it to the party.

Which meant if it didn't go well, I had approximately 1.5 days to find and make a new recipe. Typically this would scare me quite a bit, but I'd made something similar to this recipe before and I was fairly confident that we weren't going to have any issues. Famous last words, right?

For July I was assigned to Ilona's Kitchen. There are quite a few tasty things on there and I kept getting sidetracked by posts like Snickerdoodle Pie or Salted Caramel Brownies. But I immediately knew going into it, I wanted to see if Ilona had any recipes I could use for the 4th. Then I found this pie.

Patriotic Fruit Pie
Source: Ilona's Kitchen 
Servings: 8
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Ingredients:
           Sugar Cookie Crust:

• 1 package sugar cookie mix 
• 1 tsp. orange zest
• 1 tsp. vanilla 
• 2 ¾ cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt 

Cream Cheese Filling:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• ⅓ cup sugar
• 1 tbsp. orange juice
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Fruits:

• 1 banana, thinly sliced
• strawberries, thinly sliced
• blueberries

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9" round cake pan.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, the sugar cookie mix (and required ingredients) with the orange zest and vanilla. Beat until a soft dough forms.
3. Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda and salt together in a bowl.
4. Slowly add the flour mixture to the stand mixer. Mix until a soft dough forms.
5. Press the cookie mixture into the prepared cake pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly golden.
6. Let cool completely.
7. Meanwhile, add cream cheese, sugar, orange juice and vanilla extract to a large bowl. Use an electric mixer to beat until light and fluffy. Chill until ready to use.
8. Once the cookie crust has cooled, spread the cream cheese filling on top.
9. Arrange the fruit on top of the cream cheese filling. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

So pretty! I did have to use some prepackaged sugar cookie mix for this as I apparently have overlooked that we are completely out of flour. I don't think it made any difference on the overall taste of the pie since it was scarfed down pretty quickly.