This summery pie recipe from Twin Cities food blogger greens & chocolate features a sweet, creamy strawberry filling and a satisfying salty-sweet crust.

One of the most nostalgic desserts that I can think of from my childhood, aside from my Grandma Esther’s bunny cake at Easter and my Grandma Patsy’s Coca Cola cake, is the strawberry jello dessert with a pretzel crust. Also, can we just appreciate for a second that this dessert is widely known as Strawberry Pretzel Salad? You just have to love those desserts that are named “salad.“ Snickers Salad is another favorite of mine.

One look at all the photos of strawberry pretzel salad dessert through a Google search and I am immediately transported back in time to a summer picnic with burgers and hot dogs on the grill and a plethora of potato salad and chips.

I wanted to recreate this dessert as a creamy strawberry pie with a pretzel crust, and this is what I came up with. I thought about making the strawberry pretzel salad similar to the original, as a cream cheese layer topped with a strawberry gelatin layer, but putting it in a pie dish. However, I really wanted it to be a creamy strawberry filling. I also felt like the salad dessert has a lot of different steps between the crust and two different filling layers. I wanted to keep it simple!

The end result turned out so tasty and super easy. The pretzel crust is basically like a graham cracker crust but with pretzels. The filling is simply mixing a bunch of ingredients together, pouring it into the pie crust and popping it in the freezer. You do have to whip some heavy cream, but there’s no fussing with gelatin or worrying about things setting up.

While this recipe isn’t technically no-bake, since the pie crust does need to be baked for a few minutes, this still makes a great spring or summer dessert for when the warmer temps discourage us all from using our ovens.