Thanksgiving nothing without pies

REALLY, what is Thanksgiving without pie? A loaded holiday table without one – or two or three – is just sad. There are certainly tropes. You have your apple, your pumpkin, maybe a sweet potato or pecan. Funny enough, my own family did not subscribe to any of those. Our favoured dessert for years was a gelato pie from a local shop, and it wasn’t until I entered the fold of my in-laws’ Thanksgiving that from-scratch pies made an annual appearance on my plate.

I started making the pie crusts for the pumpkin pie filling my father-in-law mixed together and would also lend a hand to the decidedly nontraditional chocolate peanut butter pie that at some point became a timehonoured treat.

But when you are as obsessive a baker as I am, the quest for novelty and mastery never ends. For our Post food potluck meal, could I find the best versions of the staples? Familiar but with a classy twist? Might at least one dispense with the anxiety-inducing rolled pie crust?

The first recipe that caught my eye was a pumpkin-caramel tart from Bon Appétit. It met almost all my requirements, with a press-in crust, a two-day lead time and a promising variation on a filling whose traditional iteration I was never that crazy about to begin with.

Dispensing with the advice that on important occasions, you shouldn’t serve a dish you’ve never tested, I foisted the tart on my husband’s family at Thanksgiving last year. It was a resounding success. People who normally didn’t indulge in dessert couldn’t resist. Others went for seconds. The nutty crust was a perfect match for the creamy and not overly sweet filling, cut with a bitter edge of dark caramel. And even before the big meal, I had to tape a note of warning to stay out of the container of addictive caramelised hazelnuts destined to be the tart’s garnish.

Apple pie seemed like the other natural fit, and as I scouted for and solicited recipes, the cranberry-apple number offered by Jenna Huntsberger of DC bakery Whisked! was hard to resist. I was particularly intrigued by how much of it could be made in advance – not only the crust and filling, but also the pie as a whole – and the idea of prebaking the sliced apples. I’d never made a lattice pie and was up for the challenge.

It, too, was an immediate smash. The roasted apples made the interior less runny than usual, and a cranberry-red-wine compote tinted the filling a pretty red and gave it a refreshingly tart and sophisticated edge over what are often too-sweet pies.

Then came the hard part. For our staff potluck, everyone else ended up with one ultimate recipe to contribute, but no one could decide between my two contenders. So they wanted both. But would it be too much pie?

Oh, right. thing. There’s no such