Everyone is scheduling their airport runs, making calculations to avoid grocery store gridlock, and hoping the last minute dashes through the farmers’ markets will suffice as Thanksgiving creeps up on us. It is late this year, which is making the retail world nervous, and giving the rest of us a sense of security and an illusion of efficiency. I’ve got plenty of time to organize (and cook) the meal AND clean house and find activities for a boisterous 5 year-old. Maybe I can even sneak in a nap, a movie, and binge on season three of The Crown. As I said, I have slipped into a world of denial and make believe.
Some of my false bravado comes from the confidence that this year I have the ultimate killer pie crust recipe. It is uncomplicated, and almost as easy as passing off a store-bought pie as something I personally rolled out and fluted and crimped and washed with egg and blind baked with professional flair and finesse. You must understand first that my best pie is a diaphanous cloud of whipped cream, resting on a delicious base of My*T*Fine box mix chocolate pudding, in a darkly satisfying Oreo Cookie® pie shell; just so you have a basis for comparison. I have never been able to crimp a pie crust neatly, or even roll out a circle of pie dough. I am the queen of the amoeba and the amorphous. My mother’s major disappointment with me – that she voiced to me at any rate – was that I bought pie crusts. That I didn’t have the emotional backbone to learn how to roll out homemade dough. Well, this year, I will not be lurking in the pastry shell section of the frozen foods at my grocery store. I will be baking homemade pies.
This year I have stolen quite boldly from the New York Times’ test kitchens. (Unlike the White House, we still subscribe..)
Shortcut Pie Crust
By Clare de Boer
INGREDIENTS
1 ½ cups/190 grams all-purpose flour
½ cup/60 grams confectioners’ sugar, passed through a sieve
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
9 tablespoons/130 grams cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 large egg yolks
PREPARATION
Combine the flour, confectioners’ sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Add the cubed butter and blitz until the flour mixture has a sandy texture with some pea-size butter bits.
Add the egg yolks and blitz then pulse just until the pastry begins to come together.
Tip the pastry out onto a rectangle of plastic wrap. Using your hands, form it into a 6-inch log. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill, at least 3 hours or up to 3 days, or wrap and freeze for up to 3 months. If using frozen dough, allow to soften slightly in the fridge for an hour before using.
Using the large holes on a box grater, grate 3/4 of the chilled pastry directly into your pie dish or tart pan. Working quickly by hand, press the grated pastry into the dish, starting with the sides then covering the bottom, grating more of the chilled pastry into the dish as needed to cover evenly. Pay attention to the seam between the sides and the base, making sure it is the same thickness as the rest of the pastry: The crust should form an even layer that is about 1/4-inch thick. (Save any leftover pastry for another use.) Chill, at least 30 minutes or up to 2 days. (This can be done ahead.)
The crust can take various routes from here; refer to whichever pie or tart recipe you’re using for guidance. If blind-baking this crust, it cooks best at 350 degrees.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020632-shortcut-pie-crust?
Our friends at Food52 understand that we need shortcuts, and crimping an attractive pie crust isn’t vital to the meaning of Thanksgiving. https://food52.com/recipes/74134-epic-single-crust-apple-pie
They further understand that when you are ready for pumpkin pie you don’t care about the pie crust. Pumpkins are bold, and a pie crust of gingersnaps is a pumpkin enhancement. Be prepared to have seconds. https://food52.com/recipes/24768-pumpkin-pie-with-gingersnap-crust-and-cinnamon-whipped-cream
I doubt if our visiting 5 year-old will give a hoot about the pie crust. He’ll never know that I am still trying to please my mother. He’ll be busy feeding bits of turkey to the ever-needy dog under the table. But I will be giving thanks to an easy peasy solution to my pie crust problems.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
“I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that’s practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course.”
― Jack Kerouac
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