Imagine how impressed family and friends will be when you present a homemade pie that even has a delicious, flaky homemade crust!  You can do it with my easy food processor pie dough recipe and with your freezer’s help, all the work will be done ahead of time.

Pie crusts freeze exceptionally well in their unbaked state.  You can either roll out the dough and form it into a crust and freeze crust and pie pan together.  Alternately, freeze disks of dough you can thaw and roll out later.  Either way works fine.

Some pies freeze well in their baked form.  My Dulce de Leche Pumpkin Pie recipe is a good example.  Other pies like those that are custard based get too watery — you’re better off preparing the crust ahead of time, then filling closer to serving time (although you can still prepare in advance and keep in the fridge).

Fruit pies are a toss up.  Some people like to freeze unbaked fruit pie then bake the frozen pie up later.  In my opinion, the crust gets too soggy doing this.  For fruit pies I prefer to freeze pie crust and fruit filling separately (find a great freezer friendly apple pie filling in my book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Easy Freezer Meals, 2011, Alpha Books).  When I want a pie all I need to do is our thawed fruit filling into a frozen pie crust and bake.  Perfect pie with flaky, not soggy, crust.

Cheri’s Easy Food Processor Sweet Pie Crust

Although both my parents made terrific pies, they never taught me to cook.  I learned how to make a good pie crust from my ex Mother-in-Law, a lovely woman named Louise Tegge.  Besides being the best part of my short youthful marriage and one of the kindest most unselfish people I ever met, my mother-in-law was a master baker.  And while she didn’t do it professionally, it was her true passion.  Each day she would turn out a new masterpiece.

Early in my cooking career I used her pie crust recipe with great success.  Louise’s pies were very flaky, being made with 100% shortening.  I’ve since modified her recipe to use some butter.  The combination gives the crust a better flavor while still retaining its flakiness.  I’ve added sugar to it as well, when making sweet pies (if you’re making a savory pie, just leave out the sugar entirely).  Lastly, I altered the method of making the dough to use the food processor, which makes it super quick and easy.  Now Louise might caution against doing that, because truly the worst enemy of a flaky crust is over mixing or over handling it, but stay with me here and I will teach you it can be done!

Whenever I get the food processor out to make crusts, I always make at least 4 or 5, even if I don’t need them immediately.  It’s just so quick and easy to do so when you have the processor and the ingredients out, that it makes sense.  Then next time you want to make a pie, the hard part is done!

(double recipe for a double crust pie)

For a Regular  8 or 9-inch Pie or 4 (4 1/2-inch) Mini Pies

5 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
5 to 6 tablespoons ice water

For a Deep Dish 8 or 9-inch Pie

6 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
6 to 7 tablespoons ice water

First cut up the butter and shortening into small chunks and place it in the freezer for at least 15 minutes — the colder the better.

Whirl flour,  salt, and sugar in the food processor to blend.  Add cold butter and pulse just until well incorporated — the mixture will resemble coarse crumbs (see photo, right).  Remove mixture from food processor and place in a large bowl.  Add ice water and mix with clean hands just until it holds together — mixture should be a little wet.  Pat dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before rolling (or if you plan on freezing the dough in disks to be rolled out later, you can do so now).

To Roll Out Pie Crusts

The rule of thumb to handle the dough as little as possible for a flaky crust still applies.  The best way I’ve found to do this is to roll the dough between 2 layers or plastic wrap or waxed paper.  This method also makes it easy to transfer the dough into the pie plate.

Remove your disk of dough from the refrigerator and open up the plastic wrap.  Lightly sprinkle top of dough and plastic wrap with flour.  Cover with another piece of plastic or waxed paper.

Use a rolling pin to roll dough into a circle about an inch larger all the way around than your pie plate.  Remove top layer of wrap and center pie plate, upside down, on dough.

Pick up bottom wrap and flip the whole thing over.  Remove wrap and center dough in pie plate.

Use fingers to make a nice edge on pie by evening out the edges then use thumb and index finger of one hand to pinch crust around the index finger of the other hand, to make a scalloped edge.  Freeze crust until ready to use. (see photo top of this post)

The Easy Way to Roll  Mini Pies!

One regular pie crust recipe above will make 4 small (4 1/2-inch) mini pies .  I recently discovered the easiest way ever to roll these.  You don’t even need a rolling pin, but rather a small tortilla press, found in Mexican markets and used for making, tortillas.  This little gadget also works exceptionally well for making mini pie crusts.  Place dough between a sheet of plastic wrap on the tortilla press.

Press dough to get a perfectly sized mini pie circle of dough.

Place in pie crust, pinch the edges and freeze!

See larger image The Complete Idiot's Guide to Easy Freezer Meals (Paperback) By (author) Cheri Sicard List Price: $16.95 USD New From: $8.59 In Stock Used from: $6.95 In Stock Release date April 5, 2011.