Hey all you late-night pie-baking folks, I’m just curious:
[ ] piecrust from scratch?
[ ] pre-made pie shell?
[ ] crust from a mix?
[ ] graham cracker, oreo, or other exotic crust?
Also, what kind of pie?
I’m baking two butternut squash pies and one sweet potato pie, with crust from scratch.
(P.S. Does everyone use vegetable shortening these days? I used to get an off-brand that was part lard and, I hate to say it, but it made awesome crust!)
From scratch. But I’m not making pie this year. Pumpkin cheesecake. Just got it out of the oven, in fact. And this time, I increased the crust ingredients* by 50%, so I had plenty to cover the bottom of the pan. Before, it had been a bit thin.
*Crushed pecans, brown sugar, cinnamon, melted butter.
WOW!! That sounds very much like a good description of heaven. Double-pecan-brown-sugar-crust! Wow.
I’ll bet you never have any leftovers, do you?
From scratch, with butter.
My standby is apple (4 Cortlands, 2 Granny Smith). I’d love to be able to make a great cherry pie, but the cherries are only in-season about two weeks per year, so I only get one chance to practice.
I’d like to find a way to get the bottom crust a little flakier. I’ve tried pre-baking the bottom shell, but then the sides start baking as well and I can’t make a good edge when I put the top on. Any tips?
Pecan from scratch, by special request.
ETA: lard crust. Pork fat all the way, baby!
Not even! And I didn’t even mention the bourbon sauce…
We’ll be doing Thanksgiving on Saturday. I will be making a shoofly pie and either a pumpkin pie or a pumpkin cheesecake. Homemade crust for the pies. If I make the pumpkin cheesecake, it will be with a ginger snap crust, with ground hazelnuts and brown sugar.
mmmmm… ground hazelnuts. Ginger snaps! Pecan pie! Bourbon sauce! I’m thinking, this SDMB pie fetish is a good thing.
Robot Arm, I just love love cherry pie, and I too find that a lot of otherwise wonderful pies are set back by a soggy bottom crust. I have two suggestions. First, is it possible to put a thin crust of wet/damp sugar inside the bottom crust, & let it dry before you put in the filling?
Alternatively, you can put a little extra flour into the filling so that it’s more viscuous. I make a lot of blackberry pies, and the crust never gets soggy; but I make the filling pretty thick.`
My mom recently found out she’s allergic to dairy, and my dad, while a fantastic cook: a.) isn’t a fantastic, creative baker and b.) tends to forget butter, cream, etc. are dairy products. So, he is making a regular pumpkin pie, and I signed up to make a dairy-free apple pie.
I so wanted to try lard, but from my research it seems that grocery store lard tends to be nasty, rancid stuff that brings off flavors to the crust. I wasn’t quite willing to mail order 8 pounds of leaf lard for $60 just to try it, so I made a shortening and vegan margarine crust. Of course, I forgot that my recipe called for unsalted butter, while the margarine was salted, so it’s going to be on the salty side - hopefully not overwhelmingly so.
It was pretty easy to work with, and my five year old helped me make a lattice top, which was fun. And given how tasty the raw filling was (Galas, sugar, lemon, lemon peel, cinnamon, allspice), I think the pie will taste awesome, even if we wind up only eating the middle. 
I made a pumpkin, an apple and a mince pie. Scratch crusts. I was scatterbrained for some reason and for the first two crusts I made last night I used only vegetable shortening; in the last I used half butter and half shortening. Not surprisingly, the butter/shortening one was by far the easier one to roll out and handle and seems to have made a better pie - much better looking, at least.
I love pie, but those cheesecakes you guys are making sound outrageously good!
Rilchiam, your cheesecake sounds like it’s the same recipe I always use. It’s from a Philly Cream Cheese Recipes booklet that my mom had. It always gets raves (and I’ve never made the sauce).
Robot Arm, I recall watching America’s Test Kitchen on apple pie. They recommended baking on the lowest rack, on top of a pre-heated sheet pan for a crispy bottom. Also, they use high heat for the first 25 minutes. Here’s their recipe. The shell does not require blind baking.
I don’t know her recipe, but my Mom made the best pies with a homemade crust. I do know that she would only use only lard.
I’m at my aunt’s house, and she is in charge of the turkey. We’ve got a 20-plus pounder, and she put it in the oven last night to cook slowly.
I woke up at 6 am, and the oven was off. I figured maybe it was cooking too fast, so she decided to slow things down. But when I woke up at 9:30, the oven was still off. I’ve only cooked a turkey once, in a screwed-up convection oven in an unfamiliar kitchen with an unfamiliar temperature system in England, and it wasn’t fully defrosted, so it didn’t work out so well - so I’m certainly not the turkey expert.
My aunt is still asleep, and I haven’t been able to ask her what her plan for the turkey is. I know it’s really not a good idea to let it cool down for hours on end, so I turned the oven back on at 300 to heat it back up again. We’re supposed to eat at 5 pm, so what combination of time/temp would be best so that the thing is cooked between now and then, but not dried out like shoe leather? How should I get the thing back up to a safe temperature, but then cook it on as low a temp as possible until dinnertime? (Sorry if I’m not mkaing sense; I haven’t been properly caffeinated yet.)
All the same, I know people will end up eating the thing, but I might stick to the other turkey that my other aunt is bringing, and tell my 91-year-old grandmother to do the same.
ETA: sorry, this was supposed to be a new thread in Cafe Society. Apparently I need more coffee.
Usually from scratch crust, with butter. It’s a Martha Stewart recipe, something along the lines of ‘Easy Pie Crust.’ MIL says the shortening makes it flakier, but I like my butter! I’ll add some cinnamon or nutmeg to sweeten it up if it complements the pie (apple, pumpkin, Kentucky Derby pie).
I also LOVE the premade graham cracker or shortbread crusts for key lime and coconut cream pies. I’ve made them from scratch but I like how it comes with it’s own lid with the shell.
Of course every Thanksgiving I have the pumpkin pie curse. For the past few Thanksgivings I’ve tried to make this pie, and make darn sure I have everything to make it. (I rarely double check to make sure I have everything when I actually start.) Few years back, missing some spices, next year the pie dish was too big and this year we had condensed vs. evaporated milk (I just put everything in the fridge until I could get to the grocery store).
Right now, I’m pregnant and jonesin for the pumpkin pie I made yesterday. Would my mom and sister really notice a piece or 2 missing? 
Generally from scratch using 1/2 butter, 1/2 lard.
Occasionally, I will buy a Pilsbury premade crust, if I’m in a hurry.
Store-bought crust - the kind in the refrigerator section where you unroll it and lay it in your own pie plate. I’ve made pie crust from scratch before and while I willingly admit that good homemade pie crust is better than anything store bought, I make pie so seldom that it’s not been worthwhile to develop the skill. I never notice the crust anyway unless it’s truly horrible.
Oh - and the pie crust right now is occupied by a tofu-pumpkin mixture (no, we’re not vegetarians, but we used to keep Dweezil casein-free and now he whines if we don’t make one).
From scratch, with butter–a pecan pie.
So, half-butter, half-shortening makes it easier to roll? The reason I don’t usually use butter is that it makes the piedough kind of… stretchy. And then the crust is a little tougher. Only once did I achieve “flaky” with butter – but man, was it good!
Does anyone remember Chess Pie?
My girlfriend bristles when I even jokingly say I’ll go and buy an apple pie. Any other pie, I can buy, but NOT apple.
Homemade crust all the way.
I’m a baker by profession, and the cafe where I work has me making scratch crust too. The crust really makes a pie. You could have great fillings, but a lousy store-bought crust will ruin them.
And I’m not totally averse to using some pre-made things, like certain cake mixes. But I draw the line at crusts.