PIE IN THE SKY: Area cooks share favorite crusts, fillings and techniques - Tahlequah Daily Press

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Anyone looking for an excuse to eat more pie needn't leave a trail of crumbs.

February is Great American Pies Month, so those with a sweet tooth might as well indulge themselves.

With so many different types of pie, everyone seems to have a favorite. Cooks also have treasured recipes and processes to make the perfect crust.

Teddye Snell, well known in the area for her cooking, said she hopes her husband doesn’t find out about Great American Pies Month.

“Don’t tell the husband, because the ones he likes are complicated,” said Snell. “His favorite is coconut cream and that requires custard. You want to make sure the custard is just right. It’s a little more complicated than fruit pies.”

Snell’s favorite is cherry pie, but not of the sweet variety. She prefers to use tart pitted cherries that come in a can, saying it makes for a better dessert. Plus, people can always sweeten them up if they’d like. As for the crust, sometimes she likes to buy it and other times she’ll make it herself.

“If I buy it, I buy the kind that comes rolled up,” she said. “That way, you can roll it out to your own specifications and can you put it in a glass dish, and nobody know you cheated.”

When cooks make their own crust, they will sometimes add vinegar to the dough. Snell and her friends have found, though, that using vodka also helps keep the crust flaky. Once the dough is made, she said, it’s important to throw it in the refrigerator.

“The biggest thing to remember when you’re making your own crust is you have to keep every single thing cold,” said Snell. “You keep the butter cold, you keep the vodka cold. Everything has to be kept really, really cold, because the minute your fat starts to melt, your crust is toast.”

Another common practice is to use egg wash on top of the crust, which will help the pie brown in the oven. But before adding filling to the pie, Snell recommends using egg wash on the bottom crust; that will keep the pie from having a soggy bottom.

Both Snell and Nancy Bryan, of Nancy’s Homemade Pies and Cafe, agreed that egg custard pie is the easiest pie to make. They said it takes scalded milk, nutmeg, sugar and eggs, and can be prepared rather quickly.

If she had to choose, though, Bryan would pick lemon pie.

“I like anything lemon,” she said. “Lemon has a great taste and it’s the best part. My customers are more coconut and pecan pie. The coconut is our No. 1 seller. Then it’s pecan and chocolate.”

All of Bryan’s pies are prepared with homemade crusts.

“I do a regular pie crust with flower, Crisco, and my water. That’s just a flower a crust," she said. "I make more of that than anything, but I do use graham cracker crust on chocolate cream pies that people request, or a banana split pie. The key lime pie is one of the pies I really like, because it’s close to a lemon, and I use the graham cracker crust with it.”

Pie fanciers don’t have to make their own desserts to celebrate Great American Pies Month. Nancy’s Homemade Pies and Cafe is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Love birds could celebrate both their relationships and pies on Valentine’s Day, as Bryan will be extending her hours to 8 p.m. It’s at 26380 S. Indian Road, Park Hill, across the parking lot from Tenkiller Lodge.

Heather Winn, family and consumer science educator for the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service in Cherokee County, prefers a coconut cream pie with homemade crust, even if the appearance isn’t flawless.

“A lot of people feel like store-bough pie crust is OK, because you’re really thinking about the taste of the filling of the pie,” said Winn. “There are some store-bought pie crusts that are totally fine, but a good homemade pie crust, to me, is always the best, even if it’s not pretty. Sometimes it’s hard to make a pretty pie crust, but I like the homemade pie dough.”

While maybe not the traditional image of pie, the fried pie is a favorite for many. It’s similar to turnovers, except that it’s smaller and fried. There is a particular restaurant in Stilwell that Winn can’t leave without ordering one.

“When we go to Something Sweet over in Stilwell – it’s a little diner over there – that’s a dessert they have,” she said. “They have all kinds of fruit ones and then they give you ice cream in a little medal dish, and oh my gosh, it’s wonderful.”

The Link Lonk


February 03, 2021 at 08:56AM
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PIE IN THE SKY: Area cooks share favorite crusts, fillings and techniques - Tahlequah Daily Press

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