The Ultimate Guide to Thanksgiving Pies: 25 Professional Recipes for a Memorable Feast
Welcome to a curated collection of 25 exquisite Thanksgiving Pie Recipes, meticulously developed by a professional pastry chef. This isn’t just a list of recipes; it’s your definitive guide to crafting holiday desserts that are bursting with impactful flavor, supported by easy-to-follow tutorials, and guaranteed to yield high-quality results. Prepare to impress your family and friends with these 25 professional-grade pie recipes, all achievable right in your home kitchen!
Table of Contents
- Frequently Asked Questions About Thanksgiving Pies
- Our Top 25 Thanksgiving Pie Recipes
- Delectable Fruit Pie Recipes
- Classic Thanksgiving Apple & Pear Pies
- Irresistible Thanksgiving Pecan Pie Recipes
- Timeless Classic Pie Recipes
Frequently Asked Questions About Thanksgiving Pies
Determining the perfect number of pies for your Thanksgiving feast ultimately comes down to a personal choice, but the true joy of this holiday often involves indulging in a delightful variety of flavors and ensuring there are enough leftovers to savor. A standard 9-inch pie typically yields about 10 generous slices. To allow for sampling multiple options and to guarantee some delicious leftovers, I recommend planning for approximately 3 slices per person. This way, everyone can try a few different pies, and you’ll have plenty to send home with guests, or to enjoy yourself the next day when you might not feel quite as stuffed!
The absolute best and most thoughtful way to send your Thanksgiving guests home with a delightful treat of leftover pie is by using convenient plastic pie containers. While you can easily purchase individual slice containers, I often find it more practical and appreciated to assemble a varied selection in a single box. Consider alternating 4 slices of different pies in rectangular containers, or create a delicious smorgasbord of pie slices beautifully arranged in disposable pie containers with secure lids. As a charming alternative, you could also encourage your guests to bring their own favorite pie dish, allowing them to take slices home in their personal bakeware, making the experience even more special.
Thanksgiving pie preparation can be remarkably flexible, helping you manage your holiday schedule with ease! Many pies can be fully baked, properly cooled, and then frozen for up to two months in advance without sacrificing quality. However, unless you’re baking dozens, I generally prefer to break down the process into stages and bake the final pies just one to two days before Thanksgiving itself. For maximum freshness and convenience, pie crusts can be prepared and frozen up to a month ahead of time. Similarly, any pre-baked fillings can also be made and frozen up to a month in advance. This strategy allows you to simply assemble and bake the day before the big feast, ensuring the freshest, most delectable pies for your celebration.
Proper storage is key to enjoying your delicious Thanksgiving pie leftovers. Most baked fruit pies can be stored safely at room temperature for up to 3 days. For longer enjoyment, or for pies containing dairy, they should be refrigerated. Refrigerated baked pies will typically keep for up to a week. It’s crucial to remember that unbaked pies, such as delicate French Silk Pie or any variety of creamy custard pies, always require refrigeration and will maintain their quality for about a week when properly stored.
Our Top 25 Thanksgiving Pie Recipes: A Chef’s Selection
As a professional pastry chef and owner of a beloved bakery, I’ve spent years perfecting the art of pie-making. This extensive collection showcases my 25 very best Thanksgiving Pie Recipes, thoughtfully grouped by category to help you effortlessly select a diverse and delectable array of flavors for your holiday dessert table. You’ll discover cherished traditional pie recipes alongside some exciting, non-traditional “rule breakers” designed to add a unique twist to your feast. I promise these recipes are crafted to bring you unparalleled success and make your Thanksgiving preparations as easy as pie!
Delectable Fruit Pie Recipes for a Festive Finish
Every Thanksgiving dessert table, regardless of its size, truly needs at least one bright and refreshing fruit pie to complement the rich savory dishes. For larger gatherings, I highly recommend offering several fruit options to cater to diverse palates. There’s an undeniable magic that happens when you pair a vibrant, tart cherry pie with the comforting warmth of a classic pumpkin pie – it’s an experience not to be missed!
Discover my recipe for the most Amazing Blueberry Pie, a true showstopper. The filling is expertly precooked to ensure it’s wonderfully thick and holds its shape beautifully when sliced. Subtle hints of vanilla and bright orange zest perfectly complement the natural sweetness and tartness of the blueberries. This versatile recipe allows you to use either fresh or frozen blueberries, making it an easy and accessible choice for a delightful double-crusted pie any time of year.
Amazing Blueberry Pie: A Summer Delight for Thanksgiving
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For a vibrant explosion of flavor, I craft this delectable Mixed Berry Pie using a harmonious blend of sweet strawberries, plump blueberries, juicy blackberries, and tangy raspberries. The filling is consistently thick and perfectly sliceable, capturing the very essence of the best summer berries, all baked into one irresistible pie. It’s a delightful contrast to traditional fall flavors and brings a burst of freshness to your Thanksgiving dessert spread.
Mixed Berry Pie: A Symphony of Summer Flavors
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While this Cherry Pie was initially conceived with an old-fashioned almond crust, for the special occasion of Thanksgiving, I find it truly excels when baked in my signature All-Butter Vodka Pie Crust. The exceptionally flaky, rich, and buttery crust provides the perfect canvas, allowing the bright, juicy cherries to truly shine as the star of the show. You can use either tart or sweet frozen cherries, making it incredibly convenient. I adore this pie so much that I meticulously save the last of the tart cherries from the Farmer’s Market each year, just so I can recreate this seasonal masterpiece for my holiday table.
Cherry Pie: A Burst of Tart Sweetness
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This Old Fashioned Peach Pie is baked to perfection in a wonderfully crumbly shortening crust, specifically chosen to allow the sweet, tender peaches to truly shine as the star. Since fresh peaches will be well out of season by the time Thanksgiving arrives, I highly recommend sourcing the highest quality frozen peaches you can find. This ensures your pie will still deliver that bright, sun-kissed flavor, making it a delightful, unexpected addition to your holiday dessert selection.
Old Fashioned Peach Pie: A Taste of Summer in Fall
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For a refreshing and utterly delightful contrast to the traditional heavier pies, this No Bake Strawberry Pie offers an incredibly easy and vibrant option to brighten up your Thanksgiving dessert table. Its simplicity makes it a fantastic choice when you need a quick yet impressive treat. You can elegantly pour this luscious filling into a pre-baked graham cracker crust, as I did in the original recipe, or for a different texture, consider a classic blind-baked pie crust.
No Bake Strawberry Pie: Easy and Refreshing
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For a delightful and slightly unexpected twist on your Thanksgiving dessert menu, make sure to stash away some frozen rhubarb while it’s available in grocery stores. This will allow you to create this sensational Strawberry Rhubarb Pie for the holidays. Its balanced profile of tartness and subtle sweetness will introduce a wonderful vibrancy and a touch of the unexpected to your spread, offering a refreshing counterpoint to more traditional rich flavors.
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie: A Tart & Sweet Surprise
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This cranberry crumble pie has quickly become my new, absolute favorite go-to pie recipe for Thanksgiving, and I’m confident it will become yours too! The exquisitely sweet-tart filling, made with fresh, vibrant cranberries and infused with warm, inviting spices like allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon, pairs impeccably with the generous, crunchy oat crumb topping. It’s truly like a heavenly fusion of homemade cranberry sauce and a comforting fruit crisp. This delicious cranberry pie is simply a must-have, guaranteed to be a cherished part of your holiday traditions for years to come.
Cranberry Crumble Pie: A Festive Favorite
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Thanksgiving Apple & Pear Pies: A Seasonal Tradition
Just as pumpkin spice defines fall, apple pie is an absolute essential for Thanksgiving. This section celebrates this beloved tradition, offering my very best apple and pear pie recipes. You’ll find classic, comforting variations alongside innovative and fun twists on these cherished Thanksgiving favorites, each designed to bring warmth and joy to your holiday table.
My impressive Mile High Apple Pie recipe calls for a generous five pounds of fresh, crisp apples, ensuring a truly towering and satisfying dessert. A key secret to its perfection lies in precooking the filling; this crucial step eliminates that annoying gap between the filling and the crust, and helps achieve an impeccably tender texture that holds its shape beautifully when sliced. It’s a labor of love that yields magnificent results!
Mile High Apple Pie: The Ultimate Apple Experience
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In-season pears, bright oranges, and tart cranberries converge to create a true flavor celebration in this exquisite Cranberry Orange Pear Pie. The pie filling offers a beautifully balanced sweet and mellow profile, wonderfully punctuated by vibrant pops of tart cranberries throughout. This combination delivers a sophisticated and refreshing taste experience, making it a standout addition to your Thanksgiving dessert spread.
Cranberry Orange Pear Pie: A Medley of Autumn Flavors
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Prepare to be delighted by this exquisite Apple Butterscotch Pie, which rightfully earns its place among the best Thanksgiving pie recipes. It features a generous amount of my homemade Butterscotch Sauce expertly folded into the filling. The rich, caramel-like flavors of the butterscotch beautifully meld with the crisp apples, a hint of bright lemon, and warm spices, creating an incredibly decadent and innovative twist on the classic apple pie. It’s a dessert that truly sings with autumn flavor.
Apple Butterscotch Pie: A Decadent Twist on Classic Apple
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For a dessert that offers a slightly more sophisticated yet equally comforting profile, I recommend my Caramel Apple Streusel Tart. This masterpiece features luscious salted caramel baked harmoniously with tender apples, all concealed beneath a generous, aromatic cinnamon streusel topping. While it does involve a few extra steps, with some thoughtful advanced planning and preparation, this tart will undoubtedly become a truly welcome and show-stopping addition to your Thanksgiving dessert table, impressing every guest with its complex flavors and inviting texture.
Caramel Apple Streusel Tart: Sophisticated Sweetness
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My Cinnamon Apple Pie embodies the ultimate apple flavor trifecta: bright lemon, rich brown sugar, and aromatic cinnamon. These three elements harmoniously bake together, creating a luxurious, perfectly sweetened cinnamon apple filling that is both comforting and deeply satisfying. If you are a true enthusiast of the classic apple cinnamon pairing, then this pie is destined to become your new, absolute favorite holiday dessert, offering a burst of familiar yet refined flavor in every bite.
Cinnamon Apple Pie: A Harmonious Blend of Spice and Fruit
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If you’re eager to try something a bit different from a traditional double-crusted apple pie, allow me to introduce you to the delightful Dutch caramel apple pie. For those unfamiliar, it’s essentially a classic apple pie but with a luscious crumb-style topping, much like the one featured on my popular apple pie bars, instead of a second pastry crust. Honestly, I often find myself preferring a Dutch apple pie to its traditional counterpart because the perfect ratio of crust, filling, and crumb topping creates an unparalleled textural and flavor experience that is simply divine.
Dutch Caramel Apple Pie: Crumbly Perfection
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Thanksgiving Pecan Pie Recipes: Southern Charm & Sweet Indulgence
For me, pecan pie is a non-negotiable prerequisite on the Thanksgiving dessert table, primarily because it’s my Dad’s absolute favorite. While he typically gravitates towards the traditional rendition, I confess I love to experiment and introduce a little flair (or a generous splash of booze!) every now and again. This collection of pecan pie recipes offers both classic comforts and exciting new variations to delight every palate.
This is my perfected Classic Pecan Pie recipe, a true marvel born from what I once considered an “epic piecrust disaster.” That initial mishap unexpectedly led me to discover the secret to achieving the perfect, thick, and beautifully sliceable pecan pie. The key lies in precooking the filling gently over simmering water before it’s baked in a par-baked pie crust. This meticulous process ensures the pie filling is wonderfully set and never over-baked, while the accompanying crust is exceptionally flaky and buttery, capable of standing up to any sturdy pie challenge! It’s a testament to turning culinary mishaps into delicious triumphs.
Classic Pecan Pie: A Tried and True Tradition
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This irresistible Bourbon Pecan Pie builds upon the foundation of my classic pecan pie recipe, but with an exciting and generous addition: a healthy dose of premium Bourbon in the filling! I firmly believe that when it comes to celebrations, the more, the merrier, and the rich, complex notes of Bourbon elevate this pie to a whole new level of sophistication and festive indulgence. It’s the perfect grown-up twist for your holiday table, adding warmth and a delightful kick to every slice.
Bourbon Pecan Pie: A Spirit-Infused Classic
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Prepare for an explosion of flavor with this Salted Caramel Chocolate Pecan Pie – it is pure decadence and incredibly memorable. The chocolate pecan pie filling is rich, intensely chocolatey, and utterly irresistible. To perfectly balance this richness, I recommend pairing it with a scoop of creamy vanilla bean ice cream or a drizzle of delicate vanilla bean anglaise. The dairy beautifully cuts through the intensity of the chocolate, creating a harmonious and utterly satisfying dessert experience.
Salted Caramel Chocolate Pecan Pie: A Decadent Delight
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My exquisite Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Tart is a masterful combination of all my favorite flavors, brought together in one unforgettable dessert! I carefully select a bittersweet chocolate for the filling, ensuring it perfectly balances the inherent sweetness of the pecan pie, creating a complex and harmonious taste. The addition of a fine Bourbon simply brings all these magnificent flavors home, adding a sophisticated depth that truly elevates this tart to a work of culinary art.
Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Tart: Elegance in Every Bite
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Timeless Classic Pie Recipes for Your Thanksgiving Table
These are the truly indispensable Classic Thanksgiving Pie Recipes, the ones without which our holiday celebrations simply wouldn’t feel complete. This curated small collection begins and ends with the comforting embrace of pumpkin pie, a perennial favorite, and features a few delightful and fun surprises tucked in between to keep things interesting and utterly delicious.
This is my trusted, go-to Foolproof Pumpkin Pie recipe, designed for effortless perfection every time. The filling is wonderfully smooth, incredibly creamy, and generously spiced with all the warm, comforting flavors of autumn. A secret ingredient? Sweetened condensed milk, which contributes to that impeccably perfect texture and just the right level of sweetness. It’s an easy yet profoundly satisfying pie that guarantees success, even for novice bakers.
Foolproof Pumpkin Pie: Effortless Autumn Perfection
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Mary Randolph’s Sweet Potato Pie is a truly cherished Southern favorite, steeped in tradition and rich flavor. It features a velvety fresh sweet potato puree, exquisitely blended with warm brandy, bright lemon, and a touch of vanilla, resulting in a perfectly flavorful pie that is both comforting and sophisticated. This pie is so perfectly balanced and delicious, you might almost be tempted to serve it as a delightful side dish! After all, on Thanksgiving, some rules are definitely made to be broken when it comes to enjoying your favorite foods.
Delicious Sweet Potato Pie: A Southern Tradition Reimagined
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This Old Fashioned Buttermilk Pie might seem like an unexpected choice for your Thanksgiving dessert table, but its subtle tartness offers a truly beautiful contrast to the sweeter, richer pies like apple, pecan, and blueberry. The tangy notes of buttermilk provide a refreshing palate cleanser, ensuring your guests can savor a wider array of desserts without feeling overwhelmed. It’s a delightful surprise that adds a sophisticated balance to your holiday spread.
Old Fashioned Buttermilk Pie: A Refreshing Counterpoint
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My French Silk Pie is nothing short of epic, guaranteed to be the undisputed statement piece of your Thanksgiving dessert table. It features a luxurious mountain of rich, silky chocolate mousse filling, elegantly crowned with a cloud of lightly sweetened whipped cream. For those feeling particularly adventurous, you could even add a cheeky layer of peanut butter for an extra touch of sassy indulgence. This pie is a masterpiece of texture and flavor, promising an unforgettable finish to your holiday meal.
