The Leader • Saturday, November 16, 2019 • Page 1B
Pie in the sky? Recipe tweaks can make Thanksgiving treats healthier Aside from beZarah ing grateful for what we have, Parker Managing Thanksgiving is Editor all about food: turkey, stuffing, sides and rolls. More importantly, perhaps, you can’t have Thanksgiving without pie. “Pies are the best part of dinner,” local resident Sharron Sanborn said. It’s against Sanborn’s personal rule to buy a pie for the holiday, no matter what store it is from. She said all the pies at her house are homemade. “We always have an apple pie; I prefer crumb topping but my hubs prefers double crust,” Sanborn said. “I’ve also often made a cranberry pie. And usually a spiced pumpkin pie.” Sanborn bakes some of the most popular pies in America or the classic pies most people have tried at least once. In a local Facebook group, other area residents chimed in with their favorite pies to end -- or start -- Thanksgiving dinner. Some locals shared how they bake a classic pie, which is far from a health-conscious dessert, and put a healthier twist on it. “Pecan is my favorite,” Sarah Walker said. “I like to only eat it on Thanksgiving because, like the full Thanksgiving meal I only have once a year, it’s something else I can look forward to.” When baking pumpkin pie, Gina Holland makes little changes to cut the calorie count. “I buy a store-bought crust, but roll it out so it’s thinner,” Holland said. “It’s just a little change, but it makes it where I’m not eating as much crust. I also use fat-free milk when making the filling.” Another area resident cuts down on the calories in pecan pie, which gets most of its unhealthiness from butter and corn syrup. Martha Tilney uses neither of those ingredients and instead finds alternatives like coconut oil. “I let the natural sugar from the apples
Pie Preferences Pecan 17 %
Pumpkin 36%
Apple 14%
Sweet Potato 10%
Strawberry 2% Blueberry 3%
Cherry 3%
Lemon Meringue 4%
Chocolate 9%
Source: Thanksgiving pie survey conducted by Delta Dental in 2017.
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Graphic by Martha Buhler Americans’ Thanksgiving pie preferences, according to a 2017 Delta Dental survey.
sweeten my apple pie,” Tilney said. “That way I don’t have to use any added sugar.” Other ways to make a pie healthier is by switching a few ingredients, including using yogurt in place of butter while making a crust, using whole wheat flour over white flour or just using nut flours for crusts. Bakers also can choose fruits that are naturally sweet to combat the use of scoops of sugar. Without having to change ingredients in the pies, one resident said she tends to just choose fruit pies. While she knows they are not necessarily healthy, she feels less guilty about eating a blueberry pie than anything
with a load of whipped cream. It’s hard to think healthy on a holiday that is all about food, food and more food, so one resident said she doesn’t even try. She said she doesn’t want to have to worry about making small changes to make a pie healthier when Thanksgiving day and the week leading up to it is busy enough. “A part of the fun of eating on Thanksgiving is not caring about calories,” Sandy McCann said. “As for pie, I’ll usually eat a slice or two of my favorite, apple, with a scoop of ice cream.”
Photo by Zarah Parker Texas Whiskey Butter and Pecan Praline Pie hits the spot at SweetCup, located at 3444 Ella Blvd. Ste. B.
candied Texas pecans and put into a graham cracker crust. It’s topped with house-made pralines crunch, pecan halves and caramel sauce. “We truly wanted to make it a fun, boozy pie for the holidays,” Chida said. The inspiration behind the Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake Pie stemmed from the love
Chida’s team had for the Turtles candies while growing up. Chocolate Cheesecake gelato is scooped into a graham cracker crust and topped with caramel, Texas candied pecans and house-made chocolate whip cream. The Dirty Coconut sorbet at SweetCup was first created in memory of Chida’s trip to
Hawaii many years ago, where she met a street vendor that sold a coconut pie that paid homage to two cultures, German and Hawaiian. “I starting thinking I could actually make that pie I had in Hawaii,” Chida said. “So I did the Dirty Coconut sorbet with a dairy-free graham cracker crust.” The Dirty Coconut Sorbet Pie is dairy-free and topped with house-made coconut whipped cream and semisweet chocolate chips. Available for only a limited time is the seasonal flavor, Pumpkin Spice Toasted Meringue Pie. “It’s our Pumpkin Spice gelato with our gingersnap crust,” Chida said. “We tried to make it very true to having a pumpkin pie, but upped it a notch and added toasted meringue on top.” The pies are available to order by email at info@sweetcupgelato.com.
Pick your pie at Flying Saucer By Zarah Parker zarah@theleadernews.com
Flying Saucer Pie Company is known for having lines during the Thanksgiving week, and while I’ve never braved that line myself, I’ve eaten pies from there most my life and know that the people waiting in line are doing it for a quality pie. Recently, a family get-together warranted buying pies from Flying Saucer. The go-to pie for my family is the chocolate cream and apple pie. So I grabbed those, plus two that I haven’t tried from the pie company yet, the banana cream and pecan pie. The latter, I usually bake myself during the holidays, which made me more curious how this classic stood out. I wasn’t disappointed. Over the course of the day I cut a slice from each pie to reacquaint my palate to pies I’ve loved and to introduce it to the new pies. My first slice was of the apple pie. I didn’t even have to cut into it to have a waft of cinnamon and apple hit my senses. The double crust pie was filled with apple slices so
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SweetCup scoops out frozen pies Why have a scoop of ice cream with your pie when the filling itself could be the cold and creamy treat? With that in mind, Jasmine Chida, owner of SweetCup Gelato & Sorbet Originale, 3444 Ella Blvd. Ste. B, created four new gelato pies, available just in time for the holidays. “You get the same texture as a pie in a sense,” Chida said. “The toppings and the whipped cream will be true to pie, but it will be frozen.” The pies feature some of SweetCup’s signature gelatos, with house-made toppings and crusts. The Texas Whiskey Butter and Pecan Praline Pie takes SweetCup’s Whiskey Butter gelato, made with Texas whiskey from Whitmeyer’s Whiskey, and enhances its key components. The gelato is mixed with house-made
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Photo by Zarah Parker Clockwise from top left are Apple Pie, Banana Cream Pie and Pecan Pie from Flying Saucer Pie Company.
full of the spice that the aftertaste left a tingling. The apples slices in the filling were soft and balanced well with the crust. From the flakiness of the pie crust I could believe Flying Saucer when it says it bakes the pies fresh daily. When I first cut out a piece of banana cream pie I will admit that the bright, sunny yellow filing threw me off. When I think of banana-centered desserts, I expect the light yellow of banana pudding. My worry was unfounded. The bright yellow banana pudding was creamy and
tasted fresh from the kitchen. Thick chunks of fresh banana were layered into the pudding, which was smooth, consistent and not gooey. The whipped cream that topped the pie was light and airy and pretty much the best whipped cream I’ve had on a pie, and since it’s used on the chocolate cream pie as well, I got to enjoy it twice. The banana cream pie is considered a “24-hour pie,” meaning you should get it and then eat it, because the fresh bananas won’t last long. Chocolate cream pie is just
what the name suggests: chocolate in pie form with whipped cream on top. The chocolate filling is like pudding, and the consistency of it is creamy, but stays in its shape when cutting out a piece. The first thing I noticed about the pecan pie was that instead of half slices of pecans in the pie, there were broken up pieces of pecan on the top layer. That was a little detail I enjoyed. Sometimes with pecan pie filling, I find it too goopy or too runny, and this pie was neither. The crust on the pecan pie was easy to cut through with a fork and it fell apart in my mouth. It’s probably not a good sign for my health that I have leftover pie at home. Flying Saucer Pie Company Address: 436 W. Crosstimbers Rd. Hours: 8 a.m.–7 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday Pricing: $14.25-$15.75 Kid-friendly: Yes Alcohol: No Healthy options: No Star of the show: Banana cream pie
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