You can serve whatever 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 tough to turn down a slice. I’m not interested in waxy store-bought pies, though—this is the time to go homemade, which is easier than it might sound. We have two dough recipes to get you started (a super-quick food processor version and a more old-fashioned one), and from there you just need to 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 done multiple ways to chocolate cream and pecan—and don’t worry, we didn’t forget pumpkin.
Classic Thanksgiving Pies
Extra-Smooth Pumpkin Pie
Vicky Wasik
I tend to avoid Thanksgiving’s most iconic dessert—I’ve been burned by too many lousy supermarket pumpkin pies that have a grainy consistency and taste like nothing. This pie, though, gets plenty of flavor from pumpkin purée (homemade is best) and spices, and it has a luxuriously smooth texture thanks to cream cheese.
Perfect Apple Pie
Serious Eats / Qi Ai
This is everything we think of when we hear “apple pie”—a juicy-yet-firm filling lightly spiced with cinnamon and salt and swathed in a flaky crust. To give the filling the perfect texture, we par-cook the apples in boiling water before baking, activating an enzyme that keeps them from getting mushy.
Classic Pecan Pie
Vicky Wasik
I have a particular soft spot for rich, butterscotch-y pecan pie. This intensely sweet dessert is actually one of the simplest pies around—the filling is made in one bowl with corn syrup, honey, brown sugar, and vanilla. The hardest part is arranging the pecans on top, and even that’s a breeze.
More Apple Pies
Apple Slab Pie
Serious Eats / Fred Hardy
With a lightly sweetened and subtly spiced filling of tender apples and a crisp, flaky crust, this large-format apple pie is sure to be the star of the show. Our secret for avoiding a soggy bottom is baking the pie on a baking stone to ensure even cooking.
Gooey Apple Pie
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Calling an apple pie “perfect” is pretty bold, and I recognize that our other recipe isn’t going to be everyone’s favorite. Don’t worry, though, because if you prefer your apple pie to have a gooier filling, we have you covered. The trick to baking a pie thick enough to slice cleanly is to cook down the apples to drive out excess moisture, then finish the mixture with a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch.
Easy, Old-Fashioned Apple Pie
Vicky Wasik
This recipe is perfect if you’re looking for a simpler take on apple pie—not only is there no par-cooking involved, but you can actually make the filling entirely in a plastic bag. All you have to do is macerate the apples in brown sugar and spices for a few hours, then pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake.
Apple-Pecan Bourbon-Caramel Pie
Serious Eats / Fred Hardy
Apple pie can be a little boring, and pecan pie can be punishingly 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 keep the sweet pecan-bourbon-caramel topping from getting into cloying territory.
Rustic Apple-Cranberry Pie
Yvonne Ruperti
Our easy pie dough recipe makes homemade crusts relatively simple, but you still have to deal with lots of pressing and crimping once the dough has been made. If that’s more work than you want to put into dessert, you may want to try a freeform pie like this tart-and-sweet apple-cranberry version.
Cream and Custard Pies
Double-Chocolate Cream Pie
Video and Photograph: Vicky Wasik
If my choice is between a cream pie and a fruit pie, I’m picking the latter nine times out of ten—unless we’re talking about this intense chocolate pie, which I’ll go for every single time. The beautifully rich filling is made with Dutch cocoa powder, dark chocolate, and just a pinch of espresso powder, and it gets topped with a fluffy meringue.
Silky Sweet Potato Pie
Photograph and video: Vicky Wasik
I never ate sweet potato pie as a kid since I grew up in the Midwest, but the cinnamon- and nutmeg-scented 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 down to something like a DIY condensed milk. We pair the mixture with our flaky pie dough, which is able to stand up to the custard no problem.
Other Pies
Simple Pear Galette With Vanilla
Vicky Wasik
There’s a running debate here at Serious Eats about whether or not a galette counts as a pie, but I’m in charge right now, and I vote “yes.” Sure, it’s a little flatter than a traditional pie, but you still get the flaky crust and fruity filling—in this case pears flavored with vanilla bean, Chinese five-spice powder, and ground cardamom.
Butternut Squash Pie
You may not realize that the pumpkin purée that comes out of a can actually isn’t pumpkin, but squash (for the full story on that, you’ll have to check out Stella’s book). With that in mind, Stella set out to make the pumpkin pie to rule them all, and all it takes is some roasted butternut squash purée and homemade sweetened condensed milk. While it’s a bit more effort than a pumpkin pie made with squash out of a can, it’s easy to make a couple of the components ahead of time, and the pie itself keeps very well for a couple days.
