12 Hacks That Will Take Store-Bought Pie Up A Notch
Walk into your local big-box grocery store, and you'll see lines and lines of them: Glittering, shiny pies, all lined up in a row. Store-bought pies are convenient and, in some cases, pretty delicious, making them a favorite pie shortcut on many a holiday table. They're a quick dessert to snag while you're doing your holiday shopping, and there's no extra prep time required. In most cases, you don't even need to bake the pie. Just toss it on the table and slice it up for your guests.
However, if you're thinking that your most recent store-bought pie purchase was lackluster at best, you don't need to resort to laboring over from-scratch pie recipes that sometimes take multiple hours (and that's even if you use a store-bought pie crust!).
Instead, you can simply upgrade your store-bought pie by kicking it up a notch with some ingenious pie hacks. Some pie hacks are incredibly simple and will require, at most, seconds, while others totally transform your pie into a new dessert altogether, but all are sure to make your standard store-bought pie from Costco or Sam's Club way more interesting.
Ditch the packaging
One of the easiest things you can do to make your store-bought pie from boring to more visually appealing is to ditch the plastic pie plate or the cardboard box that the pie came in. While it usually won't be possible to transfer your store-bought pie to your favorite pie dish that you might normally use when making a homemade pie, you can certainly remove your store-bought pie from its outer packaging and place it on your favorite cake stand or a different decorative serving dish. It takes very minimal extra effort and looks a lot better.
However, as you're considering how to present your pie for serving, don't make the mistake of assuming you can just leave that store-bought pie on your cake stand overnight or for multiple days. It's important to store your pie appropriately to avoid a nasty case of food poisoning.
Even though grocery stores keep their pies out at room temperature, once you've opened and served that pie, you'll want to keep any pies with high protein or moisture content (any pies made with custard or eggs) in the fridge, removing them for serving again for two hours at a time at the most (via University of Illinois Extension).
Fruit pies can be unrefrigerated for up to two days, except in warm climates, where refrigeration is recommended, according to Gold Medal Flour. Regardless of climate, fruit pies will stay fresher for longer in the fridge.
Add shapes and decor to the pie using pre-made pie crust
As you pick up your pre-baked pie in the grocery store, also consider picking up some pre-made, refrigerated pie crust. While you won't need it for your pie's actual bottom (or top) crust, you can use the extra, pre-made pie dough to create fun shapes and decor to place atop your pie.
Great British Chefs recommends using cookie cutters in the shape of leaves or hearts to cut out extra dough shapes for topping your pie. The pie dough should be rolled pretty thin, to just about a fifth of an inch in thickness.
However, as lifestyle blogger Sam Ushiro shows, if you'll be using your pre-made pie crust to top a store-bought pie, you should bake the cut-outs or shapes before placing them atop your pie (versus adding the raw dough to the store-bought pie and then throwing it in the oven for extra cooking time).
Ushiro recommends cutting letters from the dough to spell out a cute message or creating a circular braid of dough to place around the edge of your pie. She also notes you can add food dye to the store-bought pie dough for some colorful flair.
Add homemade whipped cream
Yeah, you could just grab a can of Reddi-Wip to top your pie, and while that's certainly a tasty option, if you're looking to impress without the actual work of making a pie from scratch, consider topping your store-bought pie with some homemade whipped cream.
Homemade whipped cream is relatively easy to make. To make the perfect batch of whipped cream, use heavy cream instead of regular whipped cream, as the heavy cream's higher fat content makes for a denser end result and less time spent whipping. The cream and your whipping tools should all be cold when you start making your homemade whipped cream, and if you don't plan on using the whipped cream immediately, it should go directly back into the fridge after it's ready.
However, if you're truly looking for a store-bought pie upgrade, don't just settle for your basic homemade whipped cream with a little sweetener. Add a few extra ingredients. Baking expert Chris Taylor told Inside Hook about multiple delicious additions home cooks can add to their homemade whipped cream.
Cocoa powder results in chocolate whipped cream, which pairs nicely with pecan pie. Molasses in your whipped cream goes well with pumpkin pie, as does triple sec or cream sherry. Bourbon and dark rum-infused whipped creams work well with apple pie.
Sprinkle some salt
It's no secret that salt goes well with many sweet items. When you use salt in desserts, it complements the sugary-sweet flavor while also enhancing other flavors in the dish, whether they're aromatic spices or rich dark chocolate. That's why baking expert Paul Arguin told Inside Hook that he recommends adding a sprinkle of sea salt to a store-bought pecan pie.
But don't just use any salt for sprinkling on your store-bought pie. Arguin recommends flaked and/or smoked sea salt. Flaked sea salt offers a more delicate texture than what you would get with coarser, grainy salts, so you get those desirable mixes of sweet and salty flavors without feeling like you're crunching down on some sand in your pie. Additionally, adding a sprinkle of salt to the top of an otherwise pretty basic pie that doesn't have any flourishes enhances the overall visual appeal of the dessert.
Add some cheese
If you've never added cheese to your pie, you're missing out. Pairing cheese with apples is nothing new (looking at you, fondue, and charcuterie boards), but cheese with your apple pie? That's something that you might not see all that often. Still, it's a pairing that goes way back.
As PureWow details, cheddar and apple pie have been a thing since the 1600s. According to Atlas Obscura, this historically documented combo is popular for the same reason you might choose to add some sea salt to your pie. The flavors contrast well, with the salty, and sometimes smoky or sharp, the flavor of the cheese complements the sweetness of your standard pie. Plus, in centuries past, pies were traditionally not as sweet as modern pies, so the cheese adds some extra flavor.
It's not just cheddar cheese that's always paired with pie, though that is the most popular. Lots of cheese varieties work with pie, from Roquefort to gouda to gruyere, whether you top the pie with the cheese (chunk or melty) or just serve the cheese alongside the pie. Today, you'll find this pairing most popular in states where the dairy industry has been historically prominent, but if you've never heard of it before, it might just be time for you to try it on your next pie.
Top your pie with homemade meringue
Just because the pie's not homemade, that doesn't mean the toppings can't be. Depending on who you ask, making a meringue at home is harder or easier than baking a homemade pie, but if you're in the "easier" camp, you'll want to consider whipping up a quick meringue to add to your next store-bought pie. But which meringue should you use?
There are three different types of meringue. As BakeClub explains, French meringue is the simplest and easiest to make, but it's also the least stable. Swiss meringue is a little more difficult to make, but it holds up well and stays nice and fluffy. Italian meringue is the most stable, though, and it doesn't need to be baked like other meringues, which is why it's typically used for topping pies and then, occasionally, baked for just a few minutes, to give the meringue a golden hue.
Whichever meringue you opt to make for topping your store-bought pie, pay attention to the bowl you're using. Stainless steel or copper bowls are ideal, as they typically don't hold onto any residual fat from prior bakes (like a plastic bowl might). Even the tiniest bit of fat will ruin a meringue.
Top your pie with homemade lemon curd
Freshen up your store-bought pie with the extra-zingy addition of some lemon curd. While lemon curd may seem fancy, it's actually pretty easy to make and requires minimal ingredients: Just lemons, sugar, butter, and eggs. You add it all together and cook until thickened. Once the curd has cooled, it's ready to use. The lemon curd will last about two weeks in your fridge.
Of course, lemon curd is often used as a pie filling, but no one's stopping you from also dolloping it onto a slice of pie, much like you would with whipped cream. The bright flavors of lemon go particularly well with fresh berries, so consider adding it to a summer-inspired berry pie or a holiday cranberry pie.
Since the curd will last so long in your fridge, you might even consider making a large batch to use in other recipes. Lemon curd goes well with a range of baked goods, but it also pairs nicely with savory dishes like lemon curd and black pepper roasted chicken.
Turn your normal pie into mini pies
But what about a total pie transformation? With this hack, you can turn a store-bought, normal-sized pie into a bite-sized dessert, one that you can't buy in the store and one that will have your family thinking you spent all day working your fingers to the bone in the kitchen.
To turn your normal pie into a series of mini pies, just follow this simple, four-step photo tutorial from Sam's Club. This ingenious hack was posted in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, and it showed how you can take a store-bought pumpkin pie into a series of mini pies. Just use a biscuit or cookie cutter (any cutter that's small and round, with deep sides, will do) to cut circles out of the center of your pie. Cut the circles in such a way that will allow you to get the most circles from one pie.
Lift the circles free, and you have an adorable, pretty fancy-looking cylinder of pie filling. Instead of spending hours baking individual mini pies, you've just achieved the same result in seconds. Once the mini pies are freed from their larger pie parent, you can top them in any way you like.
Turn your pie into pie pops
If you'd like to turn your typical pie into a totally different dessert that's not even in the same family as pie, consider this hack that turns a standard store-bought pumpkin pie into pie pops (basically the same thing as cake pops, just made with pie instead of cake). The hack was created by fitness trainer Erin Oprea and shared by HelloGiggles.
Creating this new dessert comes with a very fun first step: Completely obliterating your store-bought pie. Throw that thing, crust and all, into a bowl and mash it. (If you have kids who like to help in the kitchen, they're especially going to love this recipe.)
Once the pie is mashed and mixed, use your hands to create small pie spheres and pierce the spheres in their centers with cake pop sticks. Freeze them until hard, and then dip the pops into a mixture of melted chocolate chips and coconut oil. You can then decorate the pops with extra icing, another color of melted chocolate, sprinkles, et cetera.
Turn your pie into a milkshake
Paul Arguin told Inside Hook that turning a pie into a milkshake is the perfect solution if you're dealing with a particularly ugly store-bought pie that nothing else will save or if you have a few sad-looking pieces of leftover pie after a holiday or event. However, there are other reasons why you might want to turn a store-bought pie into a milkshake, the main one being that it's delicious. Ice cream and pie? It's a match made in dessert heaven. Combine them together into one slurpable dish, and you have a winner.
According to Arguin, to make a pie milkshake, all you need to do is make a milkshake and then add a slice of pie right at the end of your mixing. If you've never made a milkshake, all you need is milk and ice cream, but it's oh-so-important that you get the proportions right. Opt for a quarter cup of milk for every three scoops of ice cream. Blend the mixture until smooth, and then add that slice of pie right at the end.
Stack and layer multiple frozen pies
Sometimes, more is better, and that's the case with this store-bought pie hack from Ready Set Eat. Instead of showing you how to upgrade your singular store-bought pie, this hack is all about combining multiple store-bought pies for differing flavors and textures.
Ready Set Eat recommends stacking thawed frozen pies (the recipe uses Marie Callender's coconut and chocolate pies) in a trifle dish to create an easy trifle without any of the work on your end. The stacked pies create multiple layers of alternating flavors of custards, cream, crust, and toppings.
For a similar hack on a smaller scale, Ready Set Eat stacked slices of key lime and lemon pies in individual Mason jars for a portable, fun dessert with a bright, lemon-lime flavor (the recipe also recommends doing the same with chocolate and peanut butter pies, for another sure-winner combo).
If you use this hack, just make sure you thaw your frozen store-bought pies before stacking them and then refrigerate them from there on. If you try to stack the frozen pies and then leave them to thaw, they'll take longer to reach an edible temperature overall.
Ready to serve? Slice your pie the right way
When you're finally ready to serve your beautiful, upgraded store-bought pie, if you've left your pie in its actual pie form rather than transforming it into a pie milkshake or pie pop, be sure to slice it the correct way for the best presentation. There are a few tips for cutting perfect slices of pie.
If you have heated up your pie at all, let it cool down to room temperature before you cut into it. Otherwise, all your filling can run out, both on your plate and in the pie pan, which not only makes for a less-than-picturesque slice but it can also lead to a soggy bottom for your remaining pie as the excess moisture leaks into the crust.
Be sure to use the right (clean!) knife as well; a serrated knife works well for double-curst pies, while flat knives are good for custard pies. Don't use the knife to remove the slice; go with an actual serving utensil.
And if you find that your first slice is always messy and never quite works out, cut a tiny slice from the pie ahead of serving. That one can be your little treat in the kitchen, getting the mess out of the way, so all of the slices you serve after that are as close to pristine as possible.