Our 12 Best Thanksgiving Pies You’ll Want This Year

You can serve all the other desserts you want, but let’s be real: It’s just not Thanksgiving without pie. No matter how much you stuffed yourself during dinner, it’s hard to refuse a slice. However, I’m not interested in store-bought waxy tarts: it’s time to make them at home, which is easier than it seems. We’ve got two dough recipes to get you started (a super-quick food processor version and an older version), and from there, all you have to do is figure out how to fill the crust. To give you some ideas, we’ve rounded up 12 of our favorite Thanksgiving pie recipes, from apple made in multiple ways to chocolate pecan cream — and don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten the pumpkin.

Classic Thanksgiving Pies

Extra-creamy pumpkin pie

I tend to avoid Thanksgiving’s most iconic dessert: I’ve been burned by too many supermarket pumpkin pies that have a grainy consistency and taste unlike anything. This pie, however, gets lots of flavor from the pumpkin puree (homemade is best) and spices, and it has a luxuriously creamy texture thanks to the cream cheese.

Perfect Apple Pie

It’s all we think of when we hear “apple pie”: a juicy but firm filling lightly spiced with cinnamon and salt and wrapped in a flaky crust. To give the filling the perfect texture, we pre-cook the apples in boiling water before cooking, activating an enzyme that prevents them from becoming mushy.

Classic Pecan Pie

I have a weakness for rich butterscotch pecan pie. This intensely sweet dessert is actually one of the simplest pies around: the filling is made in a bowl with corn syrup, honey, brown sugar, and vanilla. The hardest part is arranging the pecans on top, and even that is child’s play.

More apple pies

Apple pie

With a lightly sweet and subtly spicy tender apple filling and a crisp, flaky crust, this large-format apple pie is sure to be the star of the show. Our secret to avoiding a soggy bottom is to bake the tart on a baking stone to ensure even baking.

Gooey Apple Pie

Calling an apple pie “perfect” is pretty bold, and I recognize that our other recipe won’t be everyone’s favorite. Don’t worry, because if you prefer your apple pie to be more gooey, we’ve got you covered. The trick to baking a pie thick enough to slice cleanly is to cook the apples to drive out excess moisture, then finish the mixture with a few tablespoons of cornstarch.

Easy, Old-Fashioned Apple Pie

This recipe is perfect if you’re looking for a simpler version of apple pie: not only is there no pre-baking involved, but you can actually make the filling entirely in a plastic bag. Simply macerate the apples in brown sugar and spices for a few hours, then pour the mixture into a tart shell and bake.

Apple-Pecan, Bourbon-Caramel Tart

Apple pie can be a little boring and pecan pie can be extremely sweet: this recipe stacks the two on top of each other to give you the best of both worlds. The earthiness of the sautéed apples keeps the sweet pecan, bourbon, and caramel topping from crossing into cloying territory.

Rustic Apple and Cranberry Pie

Our easy pie crust recipe makes homemade crusts relatively simple, but you still have to deal with a lot of pressing and crimping once the dough is made. If that’s more work than you want to put into dessert, you might want to try a free-form pie like this tart and sweet apple-cranberry version.

Custard and custard tarts

Double chocolate cream pie

If my choice is between a cream tart and a fruit tart, I choose the latter nine times out of ten, unless it’s this intense chocolate tart, which I’ll go for every time. The beautifully rich filling is made with dutch cocoa powder, dark chocolate and a simple sprinkle of espresso powder, and it’s topped with a fluffy meringue.

Silky Sweet Potato Pie

I never ate sweet potato pie as a kid since growing up in the Midwest, but the cinnamon and nutmeg flavored dessert has since become one of my favorites. Most recipes start with canned condensed milk, but we prefer to simmer the potatoes in milk and cream until the mixture reduces to something like homemade condensed milk. We combine the mixture with our puff pastry dough, which holds up well to custard.

Other pies

Simple Pear Galette with Vanilla

There’s an ongoing debate here at Serious Eats about whether or not a galette counts as a pie, but I’m in the driver’s seat right now and voting “yes.” Sure, it’s a bit flatter than a traditional pie, but you still get the flaky crust and fruity filling: in this case, vanilla bean-flavored pears, Chinese five-spice powder, and ground cardamom.

Butternut Squash Pie

You may not realize that the pumpkin puree that comes out of a can is not pumpkin, but squash (for the whole story on this, you’ll have to check out Stella’s book). With that in mind, Stella decided to make a pumpkin pie to rule them all, and all it takes is roasted butternut squash puree and homemade sweetened condensed milk. Although it requires a little more effort than a pumpkin pie made with canned squash, it’s easy to prepare a few components in advance and the pie itself keeps very well for a few days.

November 2018