Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie

This is fresh strawberry cream cheese pie made without artificial strawberry flavor. To ensure your pie not only looks nice but stays intact its important to follow the instructions closely. Read through the recipe and review the stepbystep photos before starting.
Ingredients
Strawberry Topping
1 5 lbs 24 ounces or about 680 grams fresh strawberries rinsed and hulled
2 Tablespoons 30ml water
1 5 Tablespoons 11g cornstarch
13 cup 67g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Graham Cracker Crust
1 and 12 cups 180g graham cracker crumbs about 12 full sheet graham crackers

14 cup 50g granulated sugar
6 Tablespoons 85g unsalted butter melted
Filling
1 cup 240ml cold heavy cream
8 ounces 226g fullfat brick cream cheese softened to room temperature
12 cup 60g confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
optional for topping homemade whipped cream
Instructions
Make the strawberry topping first so it can cool Chop some of the strawberries until you have 1 cup or 150160 grams5 5 ounces. Quarter the remaining strawberries you should end up with about 3 5 cups or about 500 grams18 ounces of quartered strawberries and set aside until step 5. Lightly mash the chopped strawberries with a pastry cutter potato masher or a fork. Using a fork mix the cornstarch and water together in a small bowl until the cornstarch has dissolved. Warm the mashed strawberries cornstarch mixture and sugar together in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook until boiling stirring often. Mixture will be cloudy. Boil 1 minute or until its thick like a jam no longer liquidy. Remove from heat stir in the lemon zest and cool completely. Must completely cool so transferring to a bowl out of the saucepan helps speed that up. Feel free to refrigerate it. You can complete a few other steps in the recipe as the mixture cools.
Preheat oven to 350F 177C.
Make the crust If youre starting out with full graham crackers use a food processor or blender to grind them into fine crumbs. Stir the graham cracker crumbs and granulated sugar together in a medium bowl and then stir in the melted butter. The mixture will be thick coarse and sandy. Try to smashbreak up any large chunks. Pour the mixture into an ungreased 9inch pie dish. With medium pressure using your hand pat the crumbs down into the bottom and up the sides to make a compact crust. Do not pack down with heavy force because that makes the crust too hard. Simply pat down until the mixture is no longer crumbycrumbly. For more shaping technique tips see the graham cracker