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 : The Image Party ( Shutterstock ) T he best part of hosting Thanksgiving is serving an impressive meal. The worst part is finding a way to store everything in the fridge and freezer beforehand. Between pies, casseroles, five pounds of cooked potatoes, and, oh, that massive 15-pound bird dry-brining on the entire bottom shelf, how do you find space, short of renting a second fridge? Raid your cardboard recycling stash and start stacking . I first u sed this storage tactic to store semi-finished pies. Let’s say I had two or three pudding or curd pies that were already filled, and awaiting party time. Instead of laying them next to each other and wasting all the vertical space above them, I put a cardboard cake circle slightly larger than the circumference of the edge of the pie plate right on top of it , and stacked the next pie on top . Not only did this save space, but it kept my fridge more organized. ( If you’re not a cake decorating dweeb and you don’t have cake c...

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...