Tausi Insider

Photo : LightField Studios ( Shutterstock ) The holiday season is the perfect time to lie to your family. Whether it’s “no presents this year,” or giving everyone an extra slice of the “low-fat” cheesecake, I know you have your reasons. Now we’ve got a whopper to lay on your annoying pastry chef cousin: “This crust is from scratch.” Here’s how to manipulate a store bought pie crust so that you can effectively fool your family into thinking you’ve got pastry skills. The best liars believe their lies, but to enjoy a good hoodwink, you have to invest in your deception by going all in. That means a good story, and the appropriate details in the right places. We’re talking taste, bakeware, and shape. A store bought pie shell is a great way to lighten the load on baking days, but it’s a near necessity for folks who struggle with pastry. There are many big name brands out there and a handful of them are terrible. Luckily, I did the hard work for you and tested out some store bought pie...

Photo : Vezzani Photography ( Shutterstock ) Rolling out a flaky pie crust is a pain in the ass . It’s temperature sensitive, needs beauty rest in the fridge, and even under the best conditions, it might crack under pressure. Well, good news: Y ou never need roll out another pie crust . You can stop the precarious transfer of dough from counter to pie plate. Instead of planning for the dreadful anxiety of repairing cracked dough, try one of these two methods for pressing in your pie crust. No rolling. No lifting. Just pour in the dough and smash. Make a p âte sucrée crust Pâte sucrée is a simple, sweet dough. It has a high content of fat and sugar, which makes it crumbly, buttery, and tender. Sound familiar? It’s t he exact profile we’re looking for in pie crust. The granulated sugar content, along with a short gluten strand (thanks butter), allows for many breaking points in the dough, which means that a lthough you can roll out this dough, it’s likely going to rip along th...

Photo : A.A. Newton Cranberries are often the only source of precious, richness-cutting acid on the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables, which is why I’ve always insisted that they belong on the equally rich dessert table, too. This year, I finally gave in to a recurring pie-based intrusive thought: What if I made lemon meringue pie, but cranberry? If you have a bag of Thanksgiving cranberries taking up freezer space, trust me: Cranberry meringue pie is their highest possible calling. (And if you don’t have leftovers, it’s worth picking up an extra bag just to make it.) Your family and friends will ooh and ahh over the bright magenta filling and pretty swirls of toasted meringue—and they’ll only love it more when they take a bite. The tart, perky cranberry curd perfectly offsets the crisp, buttery crust and marshmallowy Swiss meringue. It’s nothing like any of the usual holiday pies, and that’s exactly why you should make it. Best of all, cranberry meringue pie is not at ...