The year is littered with the bodies of the lemon pies Shelly tried, in search of the perfect lemon pie. Arizona Sunshine Pie. Triple Lemon Pie. Atlantic Beach Pie. The Arizona Sunshine Pie turned out to be one of the few failures of the year, and the Triple Lemon was nothing to write home about. Although the Atlantic Beach Pie was universally beloved, she still didn’t feel like we had THE lemon pie. She kept searching, saying that what she really wanted was a lemon bar in pie form (she could have literally just made a lemon bar in pie form – the shortbread crust would have been awesome). Then she found it: the Lemon Curd Pie.
That’s a cheerful pie!
There wasn’t anything particularly special about the crust (we used the crust recipe from the pie recipe), but the filling got it just the way she was looking for. Tart, tangy, light, smooth, and full of lemon flavor. To some people it was a little too lemony. But it’s exactly what Shelly wanted. She said it was like taking a taste of sunshine, and she was talking about how much she loved it for days afterwards. Mark this one down as the definitive lemon pie (non-custard variety; Atlantic Beach wins for best lemon custard pie).
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.
A Mississippi Mud Pie is a traditional Southern pie with a creamy chocolate filling on a chocolate crust, topped with whipped cream and pecans. Shelly probably would totally choose that, but she found a recipe for something even more Shelly-like: a “Texas Flood Pie.” This one featured peanut butter as well as chocolate. Surprisingly, Shelly (who often doesn’t care for nuts) left the pecans in, though she left half of the pie pecan-less for the kids. Marshmallows too.
But the special aspect of this pie was the crust. It was made from Ritz crackers. We’ve done saltines before in Atlantic Beach Pie, but Shelly has been excited for a Ritz crust for some time, due to their butteriness and saltiness. The recipe called for a little extra salt thrown into the crust, though, and we all kind of agreed that’s a little too much. The salt in the crackers would have been plenty. The rest of the pie was nutty and chocolatey and smooth – especially the layer of chocolate ganache at the bottom of the pie.
Shelly decided that she deserved two pies this week, so one of them naturally was a chocolate peanut butter pie. Since it’s summer, it was chocolate peanut butter ice cream. That got whipped together with Cool Whip and swirled with chocolate syrup and topped with chopped peanut butter cups. The special part was the crust: it was made from crushed sugar ice cream cones.
The crust didn’t turn out as great as we thought it would. It was hard to cut, but then it was crumbly when we ate it. Perhaps it was because it was frozen, or maybe it needed more butter to hold it together.
It sure looks fantastic!
Overall, this was a hit, especially with the kids. But next time, we should skip the ice cream cone crust and just stick with a standard cookie or graham cracker crust.
For Shelly’s week, she tried yet another lemon pie (we’ll find the best lemon pie recipe yet). It’s a lemon pudding-based pie, with full pudding on the bottom layer, pudding plus whipped cream in the middle, and just whipped cream on top. She made the crust out of crushed Savannah Smiles Girl Scout cookies (the lemon ones).
The unusual crust may have been the best part.
The consensus was that this pie really wasn’t lemony enough. The pudding was a little softer than a custard pie would have been. It was good and it was enjoyed by all, but it could have used a richer lemon taste. Maybe some lemon zest next time?
Early on in the year Shelly knew she wanted to make a S’mores Pie, but she felt she needed to wait until the summer to do it. She looked at several different recipes with several different approaches. Some had a chocolate pudding base, others had a richer ganache. Some used real marshmallows, others used marshmallow fluff. Some of them didn’t even use a graham cracker crust. She finally found a recipe that was almost perfect. But it used biscoff cookies for the crust. The horror! So we switched out the crust of this recipe with a graham cracker crust and it was perfect.
It had all the components of a fabulous s’more: graham cracker crust, salted chocolate ganache filling, and homemade marshmallow fluff. We even borrowed a kitchen torch from a friend to make it toasty on top.
If making this recipe again, we would use a little bit less salt in the filling, and cut the marshmallow fluff in half.
We we had to have two pies this day because we had two families over for dinner and we were going to be in Utah on Shelly’s actual week. But the s’mores pie was a huge hit.
To the surprise of no one, Shelly once again went with a chocolate-cream-based pie. This time, it was officially called a Chocolate Truffle Pie though there were no actual truffles harmed in the making of the pie. The crust was Shelly’s creation: she used a box of Girl Scout Do-Si-Do shortbread cookies. Then there was a chocolate ganache layer (Shelly’s specialty), and then a creamy chocolate layer, and then whipped cream. The cookie crust gave it a bit of crunch and maybe even a slight saltiness that complimented the creamy chocolate well.
The second pie of General Conference weekend was picked to celebrate the visit of Grandma and Grandpa from sunny Arizona! Shelly had been wanting to try a lemon pie and when she found a lemon pie called Arizona Sunshine pie, she had to try it!
Tastewise, this pie was a real disappointment to Shelly. It had a bitterness to it that she didn’t like. We assume this came from the fact that you put a whole lemon (except the seeds) into a blender to make the filling, so the rind is a part of the curd as well. After suffering through the first piece, Shelly was done with it. Other fruit pie lovers, liked the pie and declared it great. (Ellie “loved” it).
If doing again, we would use the juice and zest of two lemons instead of the whole lemon to make the filling. In fact, Shelly feels she needs to have a do-over because she wanted to love this pie, and was so sad when it failed. Will Arizona Sunshine redeem itself? We’ll have to wait and see…
This week was General Conference, so we headed over to our cousin’s house to watch the last session and eat dinner. Plus, Shelly’s parents are visiting for spring break as well. Given the amount of people, we knew one pie would not be enough. So Shelly made two!!!
The first was a creamy peanut butter pie. Shelly added a twist by using Do Si Do Girl Scout cookies to make the crust, while the original recipe called for a traditional pie crust. The peanut butter cookie crust really added that extra zing. This pie was enjoyed by everyone.
To make the Do Si Do pie crust, Shelly put one box full of cookies in the blender, until it was sand consistency. Then she added 5 tablespoons of melted butter, 1/4 cup of sugar (actually a little less), 1/8 tsp of salt and mixed it all up and spread it in the pie pan. Then she baked the crust at 350 for about 10 minutes.
For her second pick, Shelly wanted to try a twist on her favorite kind of pie (chocolate peanut butter pie). So she found a recipe that added caramel to the party. We served the chocolate peanut butter caramel mousse pie along with cake for Shelly’s birthday week celebration. This pie was almost a disaster because the peanut butter whipped topping kind of turned into a curdlely mess. We ended up using it anyway as it tasted good, the texture was just off. All in all, it was a very rich and tasty pie, and was dubbed as “Snickers in pie form” by our friend, Bryan.
Notes: We found that it was better the day after it was made (having had time to chill). If making again, we would make it early the day before. We would also not bake the oreo crust, as the recipe suggests (too hard). To avoid the PB whipped topping disaster, we would consider trying peanut butter powder, instead of peanut butter. Finally, we also added mini chocolate chips to the PB whipped topping layer and then topped it with layer of whipped cream.
The Pie Project 