‘Tis the season to think about pies. When we were in Knoxville, we visited Buttermilk Sky Pies:
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Besides pies, they sell biscuits (chocolate gravy is a topping), ice cream, cookies, and cinnamon rolls.
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As for the pies, they had spiced pumpkin, I-40, cranberry walnut, southern buttermilk, caramel, chocolate meringue, pecan, chocolate meringue, coconut creme, and granny’s apple. And I think there were even more than that:
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Full pies are $26 but they also have small pies, four for $16. We got one for each of us: pecan, buttermilk, chocolate meringue, and caramel. The chocolate was too pudding-y and not sweet enough, and the others were okay but not the delicious we were really looking for (the crusts look somewhat underbaked and were soggy, none of the fillings truly flavorful and satisfying). It sounds as though we should have tried the I-40 which is a big favorite — it has chocolate, coconut, and pecans. It’s clever and cute, though, how each different flavor has its own unique meringue treatment to help identify.
I understand that they appeared on the Cooking Channel show Sugar Showdown, on the garden pies episode that airs this week.
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I like to look for inspiration in flavors so in my head I totally couched this as a way to research for the big bake coming up. For the last…maybe dozen or so years, I’ve made between 25 to 30 pies for a church that feeds a large part of its community each Thanksgiving and Easter (as long as Easter doesn’t fall during Passover).
Have to admit, after a full day of making pies, taking a picture of the finished product is really satisfying. And more satisfying is when Av and the boys go to deliver them and send me pics of them setting up (because at that point, I’m thinking of the idea of a tidy kitchen…and then an hour-or-so combo of Netflix + couch).
The flavors baked each Thanksgiving are pumpkin, pecan (can’t have Thanksgiving without those two!), and some combination of hot fudge pie, chocolate pecan, buttermilk pie, Pawley’s Island, apple, buttermilk coconut pie, sweet potato, coconut meringue, chocolate meringue…annnnnd maybe something else new this year!
2011:
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2012:
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2013:
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2014:
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In North Carolina, the News and Observer has a story about a woman who started baking pies once her son was deployed to Iraq in 2005 — she prayed and baked, prayed and baked. Now her pies are in gourmet shops in Raleigh and even Dean and Deluca. And her most popular fall flavors: apple caramel crumble, pumpkin with pecan streusel, maple walnut, Mayan chocolate pecan, pear cranberry custard, and red velvet custard.
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Via Grub Street, this ice cream Thanksgiving pie, a collaboration of Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Ample Hills Creamery sounds pretty amazing.
The pie in question is Four and Twenty’s estimable Salty Honey, a delicious variation on a chess pie…
Once Smith gets his hands on the pie, he drizzles it with hot fudge and sprinkles it with sea salt, then mounds approximately three pints of his Nonna D’s brown-sugar-cinnamon-and-oatmeal-lace-cookie ice cream on top of it. That’s not all: There’s another coating of hot fudge and a crumbling of Ample Hills’ patented Crack Cookies over the ice cream, because why not?
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And: The Great British Bake Off from the BBC (via PBS, and Amazon Prime) is the best show on television right now. The contestants are smart and lovable, and there are no hateful comments or swipes. Now that sounds goooood.