Emergency Pie for Thanksgiving!

Greg Patent Newsletter

This macadamia nut pie is unbelievably easy to make.

Yikes! It’s two days before Thanksgiving and you haven’t made up your mind about pie? Or maybe you have, but are trying to figure out when you’d even have the time to make one?

The most time-consuming part of a pie is the crust. Even if you make it in a food processor, which takes about 30 seconds, you still have to chill the pastry for an hour or two, roll it out, fit it into a pie shell, and refrigerate it some more before filling and baking.

And if you’re making a double crust pie, well we won’t go into that.

I sighed a deep breath of relief last week when cooking goddess Ina Garten gave her dispensation to make Thanksgiving pie with a frozen store-bought crust!

Here’s the deep dish frozen pie shell. All it needs is the filling.

Wow! Okay, I thought, that’s great. But is the crust any good? Only one way to find out. Bake a pie.

So off to the Lihue Safeway store for some frozen crust shopping.

The freezer was well stocked with pie crusts, which came two to a package. So you can make two pies if you want.

I decided on a macadamia nut pie. These nuts are locally grown in Hawaii, and I love them for their crunch and flavor. When baked in a pie they become toasty brown and are extra delicious.

For the pie I needed unsalted nuts, and they’re readily available. Macadamia nuts are pricey. Even in Hawaii. Eight ounces (2 cups) cost me $15.00. But hey, Thanksgiving is a celebration, and the pie makes 8 servings.

Make sure to bake with unsalted nuts. If you can’t find them, rub the nuts vigorously in a towel to rub off as much salt as you can.

The recipe comes together in just a few minutes. Think of this as a pecan-less pie with macadamia nuts.

Here’s the ready to bake. I put the nuts in first and pour on the filling. You can see why you need a deep dish crust.

I adapted Roy Yamaguchi’s recipe from epicurious online. Roy is one of Hawaii’s chefs who promotes cooking and baking with local ingredients, and this pie is a stunner. I did make a few ingredient substitutions to his recipe.

With about 10 minutes to ready the pie for baking, you’ll be pulling your pie out of the oven in less than an hour.

How’s that for a stress-free Thanksgiving pie.

Oh, about that crust. It’s amazingly good and with a nice crunchy rim to match the crunch of the nuts.

A slice of Macadamia Nut Pie. Serve smallish portions of this rich pie, plain or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The pie tastes best slightly chilled.

Greg Patent’s Macadamia Nut Pie

I’ve made a few substitutions to Roy Yamaguchi’s filling recipe: dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar, Lyle’s golden syrup for dark corn syrup, and coconut oil instead of butter (but feel free to use butter if you’d rather).

2/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

½ cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup

3 large eggs

4 tablespoons coconut oil or melted butter

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1 frozen deep-dish 9-inch pie crust

8 ounces (2 cups) unsalted whole macadamia nuts

1.Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven

to 325˚F.

2.In a large bowl, whisk together well the sugar, syrup, eggs,

coconut oil or butter, vanilla, and salt.

3.Set the frozen pie shell on a baking sheet and add the macadamia

nuts, spreading them evenly. Pour in the batter over the nuts and

put the pie in the oven.

4.Bake about 55 minutes, until the pie puffs up an inch or so and

the nuts look toasty brown. An instant-read thermometer will

register about 200˚F.

5.Cool the pie on a wire rack and refrigerate at least 2 hours. The pie is best

when served chilled. Serve plain or with vanilla ice cream.

For a printable version click here