We had so much success at Thanksgiving with the Cranberry Gingersnap Pie and the Apple Pie that Ellie decided for her final pie of the year to just combine the two. We found a recipe for Dutch (meaning: crumb topping) Cranberry Apple Pie, which was basically a bunch of apples and fresh cranberries, spices, and butter in a pie crust.
Cranberries are the world’s most beautiful fruit.
But the key ingredient, which seemed a little odd at first, was orange zest. At first, we wondered if it really needed to be included – after all, this was an apple/cranberry pie, not an orange pie. But it turned out the orange zest made the pie. With the warm spices and various fruit flavors – including the citrusy tang of the orange zest – what this became was wassail in pie form. It was Christmassy and comforting and zesty. Served warm with a little whipped cream, there’s nothing better on a cold winter night.
And of course Ellie went all-out with the sugared cranberries, orange slice, and cedar sprig from our yard.
This whole Pie Project really had its genesis last Thanksgiving. We made a bunch of pies throughout the month of November 2018 and that led to the decision that we needed to own more pie plates, and that led to the Pie Project as a way to put them to good use. A year later, after establishing pie as our be-all-end-all for the year, we knew we had to do something epic for Thanksgiving. We decided the way to go would be to have six pies, bringing our total for the year up to 66 pies. Each family member could choose one pie. It could be a repeat of a pie we’ve already had this year, or it could be a new one. As it turned out, we had two repeats and four new ones. In no particular order:
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “Ice Cream” Pie
Even lovelier than the one from June
Leah’s choice was the re-creation of the pie which prompted a friend to say “This is the best pie I’ve ever had in my life!” There is no actual ice cream in this pie, but it’s a frozen mixture of cream cheese, Cool Whip, cookie dough balls, and chocolate chips in an Oreo crust. It was one of the more popular pies of Thanksgiving, especially among the younger set.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
There is light-colored peanut butter hiding under that lovely chocolate ganache, promise.
Annie’s choice was the traditional chocolate peanut butter pie we have had every Thanksgiving for many years, but hadn’t included in the Pie Project till now. It’s essentially a buckeye candy in pie form: a powdered sugar/butter/peanut butter mixture for the filling, a chocolate ganache topping, and an Oreo crust. This was the first pie to be all gone – the kids went crazy on it on Black Friday afternoon.
Apple Pie
The prettiest pie of the year? Yup.
Someone had to make sure that there was an apple pie at Thanksgiving, so Ellie and Matt kind of combined forces. Technically, this was Matt’s choice, but Ellie accepted his suggestion for her choice. This is the traditional apple pie we’ve been making for a few years now, but with a new crust that we’ve discovered during the Pie Project, made with both butter and butter-flavored shortening. In order to make it special, Matt made the top a couple of days in advance and spent quite a long time on it. It’s hard to braid pie dough, but check that out. Breakfast the next day was awesome.
Cranberry Gingersnap Pie
The sprig of green came straight from our backyard. The sugared cranberries look great too.
What’s Thanksgiving without cranberries? But no one likes the cranberry sauce that keeps the shape of the can. This pie, suggested by Matt but technically chosen by Ellie, was the talk of Thanksgiving. We all expected it to be good (well, those of us willing to eat non-chocolate pies), but it exceeded all of our expectations. The filling is a cranberry curd made by boiling down fresh cranberries with water and sugar, and then mixing with egg yolks and lemon juice. The filling was tart and sweet and smooth and an incredible color. The crust was made from crushed gingersnap cookies (specifically Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger cookies) and a bit of walnuts. It was sharp and spicy and just the perfect compliment to the filling. Never before has a pie had such strong and distinctive flavors competing between the filling and the crust. I’m not sure we can ever have Thanksgiving without this pie again.
Chocolate Ganache Pie
This pie, chosen by Kate, has been a favorite of the family for Thanksgiving for some time. The filling is two different kinds of chocolate, heavy cream, and eggs. The crust is a chocolate pie crust (basically regular pie crust but with cocoa). Then it’s all topped off by whipped cream and chocolate shavings. It is heavy and rich and you can’t eat a very big slice – or even a very big bite – without gasping for milk. It’s a chocolate lover’s dream.
Atlantic Beach Pie
It looks like the crust reaches higher than the filling, but that’s just more room for whipped cream.
Finally, Shelly chose an Atlantic Beach Pie, which was one of the pies we chose for Thanksgiving last year that inspired us to look for more unusual pies, and led to the pie project. One of the first Pie Project pies in January was a lime version, but the traditional lemon version is better. It’s just about the perfect lemon pie. The filling is essentially the same as a key lime pie, except lemon: lemon juice, sweetened condensed milk, and egg yolks. The crust is saltine crackers, sugar, and butter. We crushed too many crackers and were eating the sweet, buttery, crunchy mixture for a couple of days afterwards. The salty crust is the perfect complement to the sweet, velvety, lemony filling.
Black Friday Pie Party
As has been our tradition for several years now, we once again hosted a Black Friday Pie Party: Bring your leftover pie to share. We had a good crowd show up this year, and we got a lot of good pie out of it. Some of the memorable pies to make an appearance (which don’t count toward the Pie Project because they were made by other families): berry pie, chocolate cheesecake, pecan pumpkin pie, and Costco pumpkin pie (which somehow we ended up keeping nearly the whole pie), sour cream cheesecake, and many more. It was a tasty evening of awesomeness.
As we have established, Ellie loves cinnamon and other fall-centric flavors. She was thinking of some normal or perhaps Halloween-themed pie, but when we were invited to some friends’ house for a pie party, she wanted to go epic. So she searched for and found a recipe for apple-pumpkin pie. Then she paired that with a cinnamon roll crust (normal pie dough spread with a cinnamon-sugar mixture, rolled, sliced, and formed into a crust). Here’s the result of just the crust.
The crust before filling
The filling was a pretty standard apple pie filling (only two apples, though) with pumpkin filling poured over the top of it. Then the top was a streusel layer that gave it some crunch.
This was taken at the end of the pie party. Note the fairly whole pie that someone else brought, in the background.
The result was a really popular, great tasting fall pie. It was definitely much more of a pumpkin pie than it was an apple pie. The apples kind of got lost in the pumpkin, and the suspicion among the eaters was that pumpkin is boss of apple, so side-by-side, pumpkin wins. The cinnamon roll crust was surprisingly tasty, providing an unexpected kick of cinnamony sweetness every now and then, but it was also surprisingly undercooked. We cooked the pie (tented and covered) for about a half hour longer than our recipe called for, because the pumpkin filling was still jiggly. The consistency of the pumpkin turned out great, but perhaps there was just a bit too much liquid in the pie to really cook the crust. Blind-baking before filling would have been a wise choice.
Now that it’s September, that means that Ellie’s cinnamon/pumpkin/maple obsession can have free rein. She had a hard time deciding which of many autumn-themed pies she could choose from, but ended up with a choice that made it the first pie of the year to feature meat: the Cinna-Bacon Apple Pie.
We found this recipe months ago as a video clip on the Good Morning America website – a lady came on and made it on the air. But by the time we got around to making it, the content had been removed and we had to rely on someone else’s copycat website where they only listed the ingredients, without any instructions. It turned out pretty well, despite it all.
The crust had bits of bacon it it:
On top of that, there was a layer of apples – we used Garanny Smith and a new breed called Autumn Glory, which is supposed to taste like cinnamon. Bacon bits mixed in. Then a layer of pie dough rolled up with cinnamon-sugar mxture and more bacon bits, to form a sort of cinnamon roll on top. then glaze and more bacon.
It was a bit runny, but tasty!
There was a lot of pie dough in the crust and the cinnamon rolls, and the glaze made it pretty sweet. The bacon was salty and crunchy and was a nice contrast. Those who are willing to eat fruit pies really loved this one.
As if having two pies on Sunday wasn’t enough, Ellie was visiting a friend on Monday and they were talking about the pie tradition, so they decided to make a pie together. They called it the “All the Berries” Pie, because it included blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and some cherries for good measure. Not bad for something made up by a couple of kids.
They put so many berries in, not even a top crust could keep it contained.
The cherries seemed a bit odd among the berries, cooked strawberries aren’t the best, and the crust was a little thin. But they got the consistency just right, and the berry slurry mixed together in a wonderful fruity melting pot. Here’s to trying something different!
Ellie broke with tradition and made a pie that didn’t have any cinnamon in it. But at least it wasn’t a chocolate pie. We found an Orange Creamsicle Pie recipe online some time ago, but it wasn’t a sure thing that anyone was going to have the guts to pull the trigger on it. Ellie did.
Two layers or orangey goodness.
It’s got two layers on top of the traditional graham cracker crust. First is a creamy cream cheese layer, just like the inside of a creamsicle. And on top is a thinner but stronger layer, powered by orange Jell-O powder. It pretty much nailed the taste of a creamsicle, so if you like that kind of thing (some members of our family don’t, seeing as how there’s no chocolate in a creamsicle), it’s great. It probably would have been even better served frozen, but we didn’t try that.
This was a bonus pie, pushed for by Matt and Ellie, since our friends the Clarks were in town. Where the Donut Pie appealed to everyone’s sweetest, basest dessert instincts, the Honey Lavender Pie was a bit more highbrow.
The previous weekend we had journeyed to Sequim, Washington – the self-proclaimed Lavender Capital of North America. While our main purpose there was to meet the waving bears (which we did, and it was awesome), we also stopped at a lavender farm selling you-pick lavender for $5 a bunch. We collected about as much as we thought we would need for a pie, but when we brought it to the counter to pay, they said that wasn’t nearly a “bunch,” so we could either go pick more or have that much for free. “I prefer free,” Matt said cautiously. And so it was.
The pie had a lot of honey and a lot of eggs, making it very sweet, and giving it a flan-like texture. The lavender is steeped in cream until it absorbs the essence of the flowers. The result is a flavor that is very strong in both honey and lavender. Our friends, upon eating it, said, “I’m burping up lavender.” And, “What if you took a bubble bath and ate a slice of this pie in the bubble bath? It would be the full lavender experience: lavender within, lavender without!” Ellie said she couldn’t taste the lavender, but the rest of us felt it was overpowering. Shelly and the girls didn’t particularly care for it, but others liked it, and no one hated it. The pie was definitely better the next day after it had thoroughly chilled. A fantastic, unusual summertime pie that we wouldn’t have tried if it weren’t for the Pie Project!
Ellie (like Matt) has been waiting for summer to arrive so she could make a good old-fashioned peach pie. Once again, we simply found a recipe online, but we went ahead and used this recipe’s crust as well, which was a little different. The crust uses both shortening and butter, which resulted in a very flaky, tasty crust. The excess dough didn’t last till the pie made it out of the oven.
The peaches were tender, the crumble on top was lovely (we doubled the crumble and had a little left over for snacking), and even though it was competing with the S’mores Pie, half of it got eaten. Cinnamon was present in this pie, since it was an Ellie pie, but it was more brown sugary than cinnamony. It was even better the next day as breakfast.
This week Ellie wanted key lime pie. But not just any key lime pie. We found a recipe online for Triple Key Lime Pie, featuring three layers of limey goodness: The bottom is a traditional key lime pie. The middle is almost a no-bake cheesecake – it features cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk and sour cream as well as key lime juice. The top layer is whipped cream infused with key lime juice. And because this is Ellie, there had to be a bit of cinnamon, but it’s relegated just to the crust.
There were some complaints that the limey whipped cream was either too limey or not sweet enough. The crust was definitely too thin – we could have used about double the crunchy goodness. But the bottom two layers, at least, were clear winners. The traditional pie layer was tart, and the cheesecakey layer was sweeter and creamier to offset it. Part of the fun of making this pie was finding key lime juice (we looked in lots of exotic places until we found it at Safeway), and then daring each other to dip our fingers in it and lick. And once again, Annie refused to eat Ellie’s pie, but fortunately Shelly liked it, because it was Mothers’ Day.
Our cinnamon lover, Ellie, was excited a few weeks ago to find a recipe for Cinnamon Pie. It’s been in the works for some time, and today she made the pie all by herself (with some help on the crust from Mom). It was a kind of cream cheese custard pie, with cinnamon and nutmeg. The result looked like a brown pumpkin pie, and it tasted like a spice cake. Annie ventured a bite and declared it “too spicy,” but the rest of the family liked it. We talked a lot about what it reminded us of: pumpkin pie, cream cheese-based pies, and cinnamon rolls. The butter crust we used was a good compliment to the pie – Ellie may have put a little too much salt into the crust, but we couldn’t decide if that made it better or worse. Now that Ellie has made three pies, her official opinion is that nothing is better than apple pie (except maybe key lime pie), and as between oatmeal pie and cinnamon pie (do you notice a trend here?), she says, “Neither. They’re both really good.”
The Pie Project 