Does anyone ever need an excuse to eat cake? No one we should be friends with is my mantra. But in an effort to be inclusive here’s a handy excuse finder if you still need some convincing:
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
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 smitten kitchen | 2021-11-10 17:00:27 |  107,375 Views |
All Butter Really Crispy Pie Dough (and a Perfect Apple Pie!) | Smitten Kitchen with Deb Perelman
Conspicuously absent: Because it’s almost Pi Day. Guys seriously of all the most compelling reasons to eat pie the fact that the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet sounds like the word “pie” and has a numerical value that resembles the way a single country in the world writes its dates is the only reason to do so and that date — 3/14/15 — on Saturday seems like a bit of a stretch to use as an excuse even for someone who just claimed that you can and should eat pie just because the temperature dropped 50 degrees. Even the fact that this will be the nerdiest of Pi Days because the year itself corresponds to the fourth and fifth digits in the trillion-long patternless irrational number that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — I can hear you snoring now — is a terribly complicated argument especially when you can just make pie because it’s totally awesome.
It’s a staff favorite at Four and Twenty Blackbirds a seasonally focused pie shop in Gowanus Brooklyn founded by two sisters who are third-generation pie bakers from South Dakota. That says a lot about the menu which includes salted caramel apple blackcurrant lemon chiffon grapefruit saltine and salted honey pies many of which have achieved cult status. You may have even bought their book (you should) that came out in 2013. But if you haven’t made this oatmeal chocolate chip meets pecan pie yet you don’t have to wait for a food media-invented holiday for an excuse.
The oats have been called the “poor man’s pecan pie” playing the role that pecans usually do (which is also great if a nut allergy is keeping you from eating them). But that doesn’t mean you’re about to guzzle a bottle of corn syrup in the name of a pie so sweet you just bought your dentist a summer house. I mean sure it’s sweet but there’s so much more going on here — golden syrup or honey and molasses instead of corn syrup; apple cider vinegar salt and a pinch of ginger to cut through the gunk; and the pièce de résistance a pool of dark chocolate at the bottom that nothing will be right without. Eaten in tiny ribbons — trust me there’s no other way — or baked into bars (which I absolutely will next time) if you’re going to bake a pie this weekend make this the one.
