What's your favorite holiday pie?

^^ Indiana sugar cream pie. (not my own favorite holiday pie, but I know folks whose it is)

Pumpkin pie is my favorite holiday pie, and I’ll make it other times as well.

Kentucky Derby pie is my favorite pie that I only make for holidays, as it has to be shared. It’s too dangerous to make it just for the two of us. I think the recipe I have uses maple syrup - my husband can’t do HFCS.

Pecan pie is my favorite dessert, period. My wife makes it twice per year: once on Thanksgiving, and once on my birthday.

I’ve found it so hard to get the right cherries that I planted a tree. They’re ripe in June, but that’s not pie-baking season, so I pick, pit, and freeze them. Cherry is my husband’s favorite pie, so I usually bake them for Thanksgiving, his December birthday, and Christmas. If we have enough (the tree is growing!), I’ll make one for Father’s Day, but that’s out of the previous year’s crop, since the new ones aren’t ripe yet.

I find them in local grocery stores sometimes, but only for a week or two around the beginning of August. Some years I don’t see them at all, but maybe I just didn’t go to the store at the right time.

Can I ask where you live that your cherry tree does so well? If I ever have my own house, I’d love to grow my own pie cherries.

I’m in Albuquerque, USDA Zone 7a, and it’s a Montmorency cherry. I think we’re about as far south as it’s willing to grow, and I have to be sure it gets enough water through the summer.

My in-laws had planted one in 1960 or so, and we bought the house from them in 1981. Those cherries usually ripened in early July. I used to be able to get four or five gallons a summer from it before I got tired of pitting cherries and left the rest to the birds and passing children.

We moved from that house in 2001 and I finally planted this tree in spring of 2021. Being an impatient gardener, I bought the biggest one they had - about 5 feet tall to start. It produced a small crop its very first summer, and I got four quarts off of it this summer before I let the birds have the rest.

Madame Pepperwinkle’s grandmother made a chess pie that was simply great.

Since she passed away some 30 years back, it’s pumpkin.

I’m near Boston. I looked into it a while ago and I think Montmorency cherries will grow here. I think I heard once that most of the commercial growing is in Michigan. I’m not sure why they’re so hard to find in stores compared to sweeter cherries.

I’m worried that birds will get all mine before I can even pick them. I’ve heard of nets that can be wrapped around a tree after polination and before harvest to protect them.

Hear me out now, tiramisu on top of apple pie.

Crème brûlée is a type of custard, just like crème anglaise, flan, crème caramel, etc. But it’s not quite the same type of custard as what you’ll get in a custard pie. But they’re all related, basically sugar + dairy + eggs for thickening. Some taxonomies will allow eggs + a small amount of starch.

My favorite holiday pie is probably sweet potato pie, followed by pecan. I would say pumpkin, but I think sweet potatoes make a better pumkin pie than pumpkin does. :slight_smile:

Pecan, no contest. Though sweet potato is nice, too. Pumpkin has to be homemade and really good for me to be interested.

I thought I hated pumpkin pie, until I was nearly an adult. Apparently I’d either tried and disliked it as a kid, or simply decided I didn’t like it. That has changed. I even make (most years) a pumpkin caramel pudding (you caramelize sugar and line a souffle dish with it, then add a mixture of pumpkin, sugar, eggs, cream and spices), which is basically an uber-rich crustless pumpkin pie. I didn’t make that this year (sniff).

I loved mincemeat pie, though we didn’t have that every year. Later on, I began to find it TOO sweet… then a friend gave me a recipe for a pie that was half mincemeat, half apple, which struck the perfect medium. I haven’t made it in years - must try to find the recipe and the mincemeat (which is actually tough to find).

A friend gave me one of those. I was skeptical at first, but I wrapped the tree just as the cherries were starting to turn pink, and I didn’t lose many to birds. It worried me a bit when we were about to have a night of high winds, so I unwrapped it a little earlier than I would have otherwise.

As the family piemaker, I was prepared to make them at my daughter’s house. It turned out they only own one pie pan, so they ran out to buy foil pans Wednesday night. I made enough dough for one double-crust and two single-crust pies, got the apple pie in first (noticing that their low altitude, high humidity environment meant I should have used less water), then mixed the pumpkin pie filling (made with pumpkin puree from their garden!) and popped those in the oven. Then my daughter said something about eggs, and I realized that I forgot to add the eggs. I grabbed the pies out, beat four eggs, poured the filling into the bowl and remixed it, and poured it back in. And it worked! They weren’t pretty, but they tasted fine!

Years ago, my (now ex) wife and I invited my sister and her family over for Thanksgiving dinner.

Sis accepted the invitation, but warned us, that her son [Name] would only eat pumpkin pie for dessert.

So okay, we got [Name] a tiny one-serving pumpkin pie from the supermarket. The rest of us tucked into apple pie, with cheddar cheese, and ice cream. [Name] looked at his sad little pumpkin pie, and at us enjoying the apple pie, with sharp cheddar cheese and ice cream, and looked like he was reconsidering his demands.

I LOVE rhubarb pie. It carries memories that epitomize the words “like Mom used to make,” for me. I have fond memories of the latticed top crust she always put on it. Unfortunately, these days I can only find strawberry-rhubarb pie, which is just okay.

I think my favorite holiday pie would be pumpkin chiffon, though (that’s what they called it at Coco’s in SoCal. At Shari’s in Oregon, they call it triple pumpkin).

I love apple pie best, when it’s made well. I could just eat the apples without the pastry. I used to make baked apples that were so good, I got rave reviews from everyone, but I can’t remember the recipe nor the type of apple I used. I really hate losing good recipes.

Oh gosh, strawberry-rhubarb pie (I know there’s rhubarb purists out there) is perhaps my favorite. I associate that with late spring/early summer, though. Never had it for the holidays. My neighbor growing up used to grow both strawberries and rhubarb and introduced me to the pie — it brings back so many fond memories. The closest I come to it these days is Noosa’s strawberry-rhubarb yogurt—my kids’ favorite, too. I just don’t see the pie around and I can’t be arsed to make it (and finding rhubarb is really mostly a miss at the groceries I shop at, and when I do see it, it seems absurdly expensive for what it is.)

For my pies, I use 4 Cortlands and 2 Granny Smiths. Those both bake well. If you like things on the tart side, go with the Granny Smith.

Can’t help you with the recipe.

I sometimes think that other people taste something in rhubarb that I can’t. To me it’s just tartness with no distinguishing flavor.

  1. Pumpkin

  2. Chocolate cream (the best was my grandma’s so haven’t had it in 30 years)

  3. Apple if it’s homemade with real apples like my mom’s (not canned apples)