Friends.
This is important.
I need you to hold your pinky up for me. ย We’re about to make a very important promise to one another.
I need you to promise me that you’ll never. ever.. ever… ever buy a store-bought pre-made pie crust again. ย Don’t do it. ย Promise me.
Those store bought pie crusts are full of all sorts of mystery fats, trans fats, dirty fats, mean fats… you don’t want all that mess in your pie!
Besides… I’ve come up with the pie crust recipe of your dreams. ย Seriously. ย Fluff the ingredients in a bowl, throw in some moisture, then press the dough directly into your pie pan. ย No chilling. ย No rolling. ย No stress. ย I’m looking out for you.
If you’re scared of pie, I’ve got you’re back…. promise… lemme show you.
The problem that I have with most No-Roll Pie Crust recipes on the Internet is that all of them simply use oil as the fat. ย Where’s the butter? ย Let’s not shun butter just because we’re not rolling the pie dough out! ย Butter is an important part of pie dough. ย It lends a little lift and loads of flavor.
My No-Roll Pie Crust recipe is a brilliant compromise. ย I mixed cold butter with vegetable (I used almond) oil, and the secret ingredient: a touch of cream cheese for binding and creamy flavor. ย The result is a crust somewhere in between a pie crust and a tart shell. ย It’s slightly sweet, browns beautifully, has a lovely hint of butter and a crisp texture from the oil. ย This dough is perfect for a custard pie or a pumpkin pie.
To pre-bake the pie crust for a chocolate cream or banana cream pie, line the chilled pie crust with foil, weigh down with beans and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes covered. ย Remove the foil and beans and bake for 4-6 minutes uncovered until golden brown.
If you don’t need to pre-bake the shell, chill the pie crust in the pie plate in the freezer while you make the pie filling. Buttermilk Pie with Warm Blackberry Sauce? ย Yum. ย Pumpkin Pie!? ย Heck yes! ย Coming soon!
Remember… this is only a bottom crust recipe. ย A top crust would involve some rolling, which would involve a different recipe. ย We’re keeping it simple.
What’s in my quick pie crust today!? ย A Good Old Fashioned Sugar Pie.
Easy No-Roll Pie Crust
makes 1 9-inch pie crust
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup (4 Tablespoon) frozen butter that has been grated on a cheese grater
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used almond oil)
1 Tablespoon cream cheese, at room temperature
2 Tablespoons cold milk
In a medium sized bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. ย Whisk together.
Add frozen butter that has been grated on a cheese grater and tablespoon of cream cheese. ย With your fingers, work the cream cheese and butter into the flour mixture, breaking the butter and cream cheese up until they’re in well incorporated into the flour. ย Some butter bits will be tiny, other the size of small peddles. ย The dough may even begin to some together in a rough, sandy kind of way.
Combine the milk and oil. ย Whisk together. ย Add all at once to the flour and butter mixture. ย With a fork, begin to combine the ingredients, making sure that all of the flour mixture is introduced to the liquid. ย The mixture does not need to come together into a ball. ย Leave it a bit shaggy and dump the dough into a clean 9-inch pie plate. ย With your fingers, ย press the dough evenly into the bottom of the pie plate and up the sides. ย Try to get the dough as even as possible, but don’t worry too much about finger indentations. ย You can’t fight that.
Place the prepared crust in the freezer while you preheat the oven and prepare your filling. ย If you’re going to pre-bake your crust, heat the oven to 350 degrees F and line the chilled pie crust with foil, weigh down with beans and bake for 10 minutes covered. ย Remove the foil and beans and bake for 4-6 minutes uncovered until golden brown.
If you need an unbaked pie crust, simply remove the crust from the freezer once your filling is made, fill your pie and place in a preheated oven. ย Bake according to your particular recipe.
Good Old Fashioned Sugar Pie
from Sweets
makes 1 9-inch pie
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
2 cups evaporated milk
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large saucepan, combine the granulated and brown sugars, cornstarch, cinnamon, slat and nutmeg. ย Mix well. ย Add the eggs and yolk and combine well with a whisk. ย Gradually stir in the milk until well blended.
Turn the flame onto medium heat and cook ingredients, stirring constantly until the filling is thick and bubbly. ย This took me about 7 minutes.
Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla extract.
Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. ย Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack until ready to serve. ย I like this pie best cold from the fridge.
194 Responses
Joy! Help! Sorry, first let my tell you that I admire you so much for how you’v been building your little Baking Empire, I’v been folllowing you for years so I have had the chance to see you push forward and change…way to go girl!
Now to the selfish purpose of this comment, For a year now I’v been having a major SALT PROBLEM. Most of the pies crust and cookies that I bake turn out waaaay to salty, the last ocassion been last night’s Pesach Seder for which I baked a pie using this easy-no-roll-pie-crust,, which was left half untouched, even though I followed the recipe word by word and spoon by spoon.
I live in Israel and I use supermaket coarse kosher salt, when I lived in Chile (my home country) and used iodized fine salt I didn’t have this problrem, but then again I was baking much less. Can the problem be resting in the size of the grain? According to the post you wrote on the subjec of salt this shouldn’t be the reason.
Anyway HEEELP! or I might be destituted from my position as the family baker
LOVE
I read your post and tried it home,it sounds very great. Thanks for sharing your recipe.
Can i just tell you how you saved my life with this recipe?
For last nights dinner I had planned cigarette bรถreks (the turkish equivalent to taquitos, made of filled, rolled-up and fried yufka/filo dough); after having made the filling (garlicy sautรฉed radish greens, feta, cottage cheese) and a spicy tomato dipping sauce bubbling away, I realized that the filo sheets had gotten bad and i needed an instant change of plans: making filo dough from scratchโ how does that even work? pasta dough for some kind of ravioli โ no resting time!
Enter: your perfect quick pie crust! I had no cream cheese, so i used low fat cottage cheese instead and substituted half the milk with heavy cream to make up for the overall fat content; also olive instead of almond oilโฆ it was super quick and easy to make; I added an extra egg to my filling and there i had a completely improvised but oh so delicious savoury pie / quiche, with a perfectly crispy and flaky crust.
So: thank you once again for your great, adaptable and always reliable recipes!!
I was wondering, can you use a food processor for this? I don’t like getting my hands too greasy, even if it is for a pie :)
I tried your milk chocolate pancakes,they were divine….sent them over to my friends and she said they were gone in 3 mins…Thumbs up and wish you all the success for such delicious mouthwatering recipes you provide us…God bless you….
Is there anyway you will ever make a date and pecan pie mixture for i would looooove to try it….Its a cheeky request *_*