Thanksgiving Pie Round Up

I follow a lot of bakers on Instagram and I know I didn’t really bake a lot of pies last week, but it definitely felt like I did. I did an auction pie on Tuesday, and then our four Thanksgiving pies on Wednesday. Here’s a roundup of how things went:

Auction Apple Pie

This may have been the best pie I made. Obviously I didn’t eat it, so I can’t speak for the final product, but I did bake up some of the dough scraps and they may have some of the best pie crust I’ve made lately:

The crust was incredibly flaky and tender! I was so excited about these crusts that I did a little photo shoot of them for Instagram. Totally normal reaction to pie crust. For the filling, I did what Erin Jeanne McDowell describes in the Book on Pie as her favorite apple pie. It’s a lot of brown sugar, a little bit of cinnamon, lemon juice, granulated sugar and flour to thicken. I used honeycrisp apples, which, once cooked in the brown sugar, basically turned the sugar into apple cider caramel. Almost like if you made these and they didn’t quite set up. I can tell you what it tasted like because I ate everything that dripped out of the pie. I was so happy with how this pie turned out. I give it an A-.

Pumpkin Pie

For the pumpkin and pecan pies, I made traditional flaky crust and I premade the filling and kept them in the refrigerator overnight, which seemed to work well.

When I parbaked the crust, a lot of butter leaked out, which was really sad and made the crust a bit tough. For the filling, I used Erin Jeanne McDowell’s pumpkin pie recipe, with mascarpone. I thought it baked up okay, but it cracked terribly, which was really unfortunate. I used an instant read thermometer, and it wasn’t overbaked, so I don’t know what happened. It tasted good, but traditional pumpkin pie isn’t my favorite. Partially because of things that truly went wrong, partially because of my own feelings about pumpkin pie, I have to give this pie a C+.

Pecan Pie

The pecan pie crust was better than the pumpkin pie crust, but it still lost a fair amount of butter. For the filling I used the Karo recipe. I think I slightly overbaked the pecan pie, but, it’s so sweet and gooey, who could tell?? I give it a solid B.

I ended up not baking an apple pie for our Thanksgiving celebration and did a pumpkin chiffon pie. I really liked it, the pie was light and delicious, creamy and pumpkiny without being too much. It’s an old family recipe from my boss. It was also so easy to make, it was all made in the food processor! My one issue with it is that it included gelatin, so if I make it next year, I will find a truly vegetarian recipe.

For this and the pistachio cream pie, I did a brown butter press-in cookie crust. I don’t do press-in crusts often, but this one was easy and came together nicely. I give it a B+.

Pistachio Cream Pie

This pie was the hit of the evening! Everyone really loved it. Grinding up the pistachios burnt out my blender, but luckily I had finished the cream. My personal opinion is that I may have just slightly overcooked the filling. The texture just didn’t quite seem right to me. But the flavor was great and I think it’s worth trying again! Because of my issues with the texture, I give it a B-.

Overall, it was a lot of pie, but fun to work through it all! I have two more auction pies to do in the next couple of weeks and I have big Christmas cookie plans!

Here is a picture of my final pie spread - with pumpkin bread I didn’t make (ugh that crack in the pumpkin pie).

I hope you have fun Christmas baking plans!