Strawberry Pie from Celeste

Spoilers for the ending of Celeste (2018) below.

In the summer of 2022, I played through the indie game Celeste at the encouragement of two very dear friends. For the uninitiated, this game is set in Canada and focuses on a young woman named Madeline, and her climb to the summit of Mount Celeste. Along the way, she makes friends with another climber and an old woman who lives at the mountain base, and struggles with her internal anxieties, which manifest in a supernatural way. Mount Celeste is a real place on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, although the version in Celeste is much taller, and more treacherous.

If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be interested. As an achievement hunter, I sought to unlock every single achievement, and this required playing the B and C-Sides, extremely challenging obstacle courses where one wrong move means starting over completely. Through practice, patience (which I lack) and persistence (which I have in abundance), I conquered both, and rewarded myself with the official Fangamer plushies of Madeline and her manifested doppelganger, Part of Me, better known as Badeline. The best part is that they have magnets so they can hold hands.

Throughout Celeste, Madeline can collect strawberries, some of which have wings and will fly away from her. The game keeps a tally of how many strawberries you pick up. At the end of her journey, Madeline comes back down to the base of the mountain, and in the ending, makes a pie with all of the strawberries she collected. The quality of the pie depends on the number. Zero means the pie is awful. Every single one, and it becomes “The Perfect Run” pie, which is what I made.

The Perfect Run pie is topped with a lattice crust, a ring of whipped cream on the crust, two scoops of strawberry ice cream, and three whole strawberries, one of which has wings.

A recipe is included on a card that comes with the physical Collector’s Edition of Celeste, which was scanned and shared online. You’ll find it pretty much immediately if you decide to look it up. While other internet chefs and personalities have developed their own version of the pie, to be as authentic as possible, I chose to make the “official” recipe. It entails making your own pie crust and filling.

The best pies are always from scratch in my humble opinion. Personally, I find that store bought pie crusts never get flaky like pies made in a bakery, and are often overcooked by the time whatever pie you make is finished. So I’ve started trying to make my own, with mixed success thus far, but with every attempt I’ve got better.

The day I made the pie, I went out to get the ice cream, additional berries and white chocolate, the ingredients needed for the “Perfect Run” variant. The white chocolate was the one modification I made to the official recipe, so I could add the strawberry’s wings. Seeing as strawberries in real life don’t have wings, I made mine out of melted white chocolate that I formed into wing shapes on parchment paper, and allowed to set. I’m sure white candy melts would work as well, although I’ve not tested it with them.

Having followed the recipe up to this point, you can see in the above photo that the filling overflowed. Where I went wrong was in the positioning of the pie in the oven, and not properly forming the crust or sealing the lattice over top. I even forgot that you’re supposed to weave the lattice from top to bottom and had to redo it. With the pie done at least according to the recipe, I decided to let it cool completely and hope for the best. The edges would be covered with whipped cream in the end, so no one would know.

Then the time came to try it. I was encouraged not to add the whipped cream to the top of the pie, but I had to make it look like the one in Celeste! Pro tip: you can make whipped cream ahead of time. Ina Garten makes her whipped cream stabilized by adding two tablespoons of creme fraiche while whipping the cream, sugar and vanilla. I did that with this cream and it held up for longer than if I hadn’t.

You’ll see with my upcoming blog entries how my pie crust making skills have advanced. I still have a way to go, but it’s never been as disastrous as this one. I didn’t form the crust right and so when I cut a slice, it collapsed.

So the verdict: this is a good recipe! Very tasty, bright flavors from the strawberries, a lovely cooling factor from the ice cream, and a buttery, crumbly crust that wasn’t dry at all. I want to make this again now that I’ve done a few more pie crusts, and do it right.