Pies are fine for Oscars party

If you’re like millions of film fans Sunday, you’ll tune in to the Academy Awards ceremony. Invite a few movie-loving friends to enjoy the red carpet spectacular with you. Oscar night is a great excuse to give a party.

An Oscar- night party is easy to host. The entertainment is simple. Just keep the TV tuned into the merriment, raising or lowering the volume at your favorite spots.

I consulted with Christopher Kimball, founder of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and host of the popular television program “America’s Test Kitchen,” on how we might go about making pies for dessert at an Academy Awards party.

Mr. Kimball offered advice on pie-making based on recipes he and his team at “America’s Test Kitchen” have carefully developed. According to Mr. Kimball: “The most important part of a pie is the crust. Nothing beats homemade crust. Not even close.”

Fear of crust making is the No. 1 reason most of us give for not making pie, so I asked Mr. Kimball for crust secrets. “Pastry crust can be difficult for home cooks,” he said. “There are two things going on that are contradictory. You need to add water to the crust so you can roll it out, but if you add too much, the crust will be tough.”

Mr. Kimball proposed two solutions. One is store-bought crust. “We tested Pillsbury Just Unroll Refrigerated Pie Crust at our test kitchens,” said Mr. Kimball, “and while the flavor was bland, it wasn’t offensive, and it was definitely flaky.” A second option is to try “America’s Test Kitchen’s” foolproof pie crust recipe, which has a secret ingredient — vodka. Do you need to go high proof to get foolproof? Not at all. According to Mr. Kimball, “the alcohol in the vodka totally evaporates in the baking, so you get a moist dough for rolling out but that bakes up perfectly. It’s never tough.” The recipe follows.

Besides the great foolproof vodka pie crust, Mr. Kimball shared his tried and many-times-tested recipes for deep dish apple pie, which uses this easy-to-make crust.

Another must-try recipe for your Oscar-night party is America’s Test Kitchen chocolate cream pie, for which you can use a store-bought graham cracker crust or make your own. Once you master the basic recipe, you can try endless variations.

For example, you can omit the cocoa and chocolate for a plain vanilla cream pie, and then add bananas for banana cream pie or toasted coconut for coconut cream pie.

Foolproof vodka pie dough

Vodka is essential to the texture of the crust and imparts no flavor — do not substitute.

21/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon table salt

2 tablespoons sugar

12 tablespoons (11/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch slices

Story Continues →