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Spice up your pie game

9 Recipes
Spiced pumpkin pie.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Or are we not doing pie this year either?

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If you’re onboard with Times cooking columnist Ben Mims’ Pie is Canceled for Thanksgiving 2020, then you’ve got his Pumpkin Nemesis, Malted Milk Pecan Pie (with a no-roll crust, so it’s kind of not really pie) and Apple Fritter Cake with Butterscotch Glaze to choose from this year. All are A-mazing (trust me, I’ve tested and tasted them all), so you won’t go wrong with any of them.

But if you’ve got your eye on a pie, you are in good company. I hear the voice of my former Times colleague Amy Scattergood insisting, in her Spiced Pumpkin Pie story of 2015, that “this is Thanksgiving, the one time of the year when you need a real pie, preferably pumpkin, the custard laced with a happily inordinate amount of spices — lots of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, some turmeric and, in my kitchen, a dose of cayenne.”

Along with Amy’s pie, I found some other gems in our archives, classic-sounding pies but each with a twist — a Bourbon Pecan Pie with No-Roll Crust is vegan. Apple-quince pie — you don’t see much that calls for quinces. Perfect Pecan Pie uses olive oil in the crust, not butter. Babalu Caramel Pecan Apple Pie is apple pie smothered in caramel and pecans. ‘Pumpkin’ Custard Meringue Pie is actually made with butternut squash and sweet potatoes. And there are more!

What Ben’s desserts and these pies share is a delightful surprise. For the baker it may be the discovery of a new technique or ingredient; for the eater, an utterly divine eating experience. Those are things the pandemic cannot take away from us.

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Babalu Caramel Pecan Apple Pie

Time2 hours 35 minutes
YieldsServes 8

Sweet potato pie with pecan streusel

Time1 hour
YieldsServes 8

Oven-Fried Apple Pie with Spiced Shortening Crust

Time2 ½ hours, largely unattended
YieldsServes 12
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'Pumpkin' custard meringue pie

Time4 hours 30 minutes
YieldsServes 8

Apple-quince pie

Time5 hours 45 minutes
YieldsServes 8

Perfect pecan pie

Time1 hour
YieldsServes 8
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Nashville Hot Pumpkin Pie

Time2 hours
YieldsMakes two 9-inch pies

Bourbon Pecan Pie With No-Roll Crust

Time2 hours, largely unattended
YieldsServes 12

Spiced pumpkin pie

Time1 hour 30 minutes
YieldsServes 8 to 10
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