How Professional Chefs Make Holiday Desserts (Pies, Tarts, and More) | America's Test Kitchen

Some of my very talented cook friends and I have been having an amazing Friendsgiving right here at my house and we sampled so many awesome savory dishes including a really succulent incredibly juicy turkey thigh confit, this bright bitter radicchio salad, cheesy potatoes which are the best kind of potatoes, and the fluffiest dinner rolls anyone has ever had. It's been really wonderful but it is now time for dessert which might just be the best part of the meal. Well I can tell from everyone's reaction right now that you're in the same camp as me where like this is the best part of the meal. This is such an awesome spread. Dan, how about this pecan pie? So I went traditional here. I'm kind of a nostalgic person and so this is a classic pecan pie. I don't know, I just love pie. I grew up in a big pie house so I really wanted one to be on the table today. So we're going to make an old-fashioned pecan pie here today, and that means we're going to really look at the sugars that are in the recipe for really complex flavor. But before we get to that filling, we're actually going to start with the dough itself, and I'm making what we call our foolproof all-butter pie dough. So this is two tablespoons of unsalted butter, and I'm just using the big holes on a box grater here. So I'm going to freeze the butter because we're going to add it towards the end of the dough, and it's going to add beautiful flakiness between each layer. We need a lot more butter than two tablespoons in here, and so with the rest of this stick of butter here, I'm gonna cut it into half inch pieces. All right, we have our cubed butter here. We're gonna go over to our food processor. So this is one of the reasons that this recipe is so easy to work with. Using the food processor makes it really consistent. So into my food processor, I'm gonna put three and three quarter ounces of all-purpose flour, one tablespoon of sugar, and then a half teaspoon of salt. Awesome, okay, so now I'm just gonna pop my lid on and process this until it's combined. Now it's time for our butter. So we're gonna put this in. We're gonna process it until it is a smooth paste. So this paste is really kind of unusual in pie dough. That butter coats the flour, so it sort of waterproofs it. All right, and that is perfect. So for the rest of our flour, we have two and a half ounces of all-purpose flour. And I'm just going to sprinkle this over. And now here's the finesse of this recipe, but it's not even that hard to finesse. So I'm going to pulse this for about four to five pulses. What I'm looking for is no pieces larger than an inch. That flour will be available to form gluten and provide a little bit of structure. Okay, so we've got our beautiful process dough. So this isn't going to look like much, but we're going to transfer it. To a bowl here, I'm going to grab my frozen grated butter and we're just going to add this in. And just toss it really briefly to evenly distribute it throughout. So I'm going to add two tablespoons of ice water and I'm just scooping it, leaving the ice behind. And I'm just going to gently toss this around to distribute that water. So it's starting to clump a little bit. The flour on the surface of the paste is going to start absorbing some of it, but we're going to need a little bit more. So I'm going to add two more tablespoons. And do the same thing start to bring it together into a dough and get some plastic wrap and we'll just transfer it to the center and then I just use the plastic wrap itself to sort of mold it into a nice shape. And this is a step I really like to do you're trying to make a round pie at the end of the day so you want this dough to be as round as possible at this point so you're not starting with a square and then trying to make it to a circle which is a lot harder. All right, so I'm gonna pop this in the fridge. You wanna go for at least two hours, but you could do this two days in advance if you're baking for a Friendsgiving. You can also freeze this dough for a month. So make it, have it on hand, make your life a lot easier down the line. Let's go to the fridge. So we have our dough. It's been out of the fridge for about 10 minutes. So I'm gonna take it out of the plastic. You can be really generous, use a well-floured counter here. So I'm gonna cover this with a generous amount of flour. Okay, on both sides. Make your life easy with the flour, that's what I say. Start rolling. I learned how to make pies from my mom and my grandmother. I will say that they will beat the pants out of me any day at this. So I'm very humble about my pie dough skills. So I'm going for a 12 inch circle here. I'm using a nine inch pie plate. So we need a little bit of overhang because we're gonna make a beautiful crimp. Beautiful, okay, so this is 12 all around. All right, so now I have my pie plate. I really like to roll it around a rolling pin, and then you're just unrolling it in. So then all I do is I go around the side and I pick it up and I ease it in to the bottom. You don't wanna stretch pie dough. Okay, so now it is time for crimping. The first thing we're gonna do is pick this up and roll it under itself. And I basically just do this really simple motion where I press in like that. And you get this sort of beautiful edge here. Beautiful, okay. That is our gorgeous crimped. Pie dough. This is gonna go into the fridge for about 30 minutes and that's gonna firm up that butter. So then when we go to bake it, we're gonna get really nice edges. So while our pie dough chills in the fridge, we're gonna work on our filling. Now, I mentioned that this is an old-fashioned pecan pie and that really means that we looked a lot at the sweeteners in here to get this old-fashioned flavor. I'm gonna start with a full cup of light brown sugar. Next up, I have a cup of maple syrup, a half a cup of heavy cream, and then finally, we have a tablespoon of molasses. All right so now I'm just going to heat this mixture over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Probably takes about three minutes. So I'm going to turn off my heat. Next up I have four tablespoons of butter. I'm just going to whisk this butter in and then I'm also going to add a half teaspoon of table salt. Next up I'm going to add six egg yolks. So this is how we turn this mixture here into a custard. All right here we go our beautiful chilled Pie crust. Now it's time for our pecans. This is the start of the show here. So I have one and a half cups of pecans that I just coarsely chopped. We're literally just gonna sprinkle them on the bottom of our pie. And now we simply pour our custard over the top. Yeah, that looks so good. Already, I mean right now it's like pecan soup, but like I would eat pecan soup. So now I'm gonna go into my oven, which is set at 450 degrees. As soon as I put it in, drop it immediately to 325 degrees. That initial burst of heat is gonna help bake the pie dough. We're gonna bake it for about 45 to 60 minutes. We're looking for a beautiful jiggle in the filling and that's when you know that it's perfectly done, but not over baked. So we're going to do an hour here on the counter, three hours in the fridge, and then when it comes time to serving, let it sit for about an hour before people eat, maybe pull it out when dinner is on the table, and that means that it's going to be at the perfect temperature. Nick has a really interesting dessert They brought this It's the wild card today. Nick is the wild card, he brought the wild card. I feel like it's wild, bold, and big like me. Uh, what I want to say is that What I made today, and it's probably like the best thing you would ever eat. In your life at Thanksgiving, it's my cranberry curd spice pastry cream parfait with a little bit of crushed Biscoff on top. Wow, so good, next. See, I told you. Friendsgiving, or any celebration, is made better with Teak House. Their cutting and serving boards are crafted from sustainable teak, built to last, and designed to inspire. They're more than kitchen tools. They're timeless masterpieces, essential in any kitchen. I love Thanksgiving, but when it comes to desserts, I find them very sweet. My preference is for desserts that are less sweet, more lighter, and also refreshing. So what I'm making today is Spiced Cranberry Curd with Spiced Pastry Cream. I've added a pound of frozen cranberries to the saucepan. Next goes in sugar, followed by cinnamon, star anise, and a little bit of cardamom. Tiny pinch of salt. Some water. And I'm going to bring this to a boil and once it starts boiling I'm going to reduce the heat to a simmer and cook it for about 10 minutes until the cranberries burst and their seeds come out. Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that I've adopted and learned to love. Back home in India, the closest holiday for me to Thanksgiving would have been Christmas because that's when I got together with my family and my friends and we had a huge celebration that started a month in advance. And I feel Thanksgiving is kind of like that. There's this build-up to it as soon as November kicks in, which is why I love it so much. The cranberries are going to cook with the spices and sugar for about 10 minutes in total. In the meanwhile, I'm going to take three yolks into a large bowl and then I'm going to whisk it with a tablespoon of sugar and cornstarch. And this will give us a smooth, delicious cranberry curd. My cranberries are done. What I'm going to do now is pull out the two whole spices from here, the cinnamon stick and the star anise. The cranberries have burst, they've released their seeds and you can start You can start to see the mixture thicken. Now I'm going to transfer this hot cranberry mixture straight into my food processor. I'm going to add the yolks that I whisked with cornstarch and sugar, and I'm going to start pulsing this until you can start to see the cranberry flex from the skin in this mixture. I'm going to add the butter to this cranberry mixture, but I'm going to do that while running the food processor. This helps the butter emulsify with the cranberry and it provides a better curd that stays stable and completely emulsified. I'm going to transfer it into a saucepan. Straining the seeds and the skins will give you the smoothest texture possible. It's more velvety, more luscious in your mouth. All right, this is looking pretty good. Now I'm heating this mixture until it reaches 165 degrees. That's the temperature at which yolks and sugar start to thicken the cranberry curd properly. Now I'm gonna transfer the cranberry mixture to this bowl, and then I'm gonna cover it with a layer of parchment paper and leave it in the refrigerator to cool completely. I'm going to start preparing the second part of my dessert, the spiced pastry cream. It's really simple to do. I'm going to start with whole milk and add it to the saucepan. Sugar. For the spice in the pastry cream, I'm adding a small amount of green cardamom. Cardamom adds a beautiful, sweet cooling fragrance which will give the pastry cream a lighter feel and it also helps pop the flavors of that cranberry curd we just made. Next goes in a pinch of salt. Now I'm going to cook this until the sugar completely dissolves. Now while this is taking place, I am going to start on the yolks, which is going to be the mixture that helps thicken the pastry cream. Some cornstarch. I'm also adding sugar, which along with the cornstarch will prevent the egg yolks from curdling while it's heating in there. And I'm whisking this until it is completely smooth and combined. I'm going to temper the yolks to make sure that they don't curdle before they go in here. Carefully add it into the yolks while whisking. And I'm going to add this mixture directly to the milk. Make sure you're whisking properly so it combines. And you'll start to notice as it continues to cook, you can see how thick it's turned. And if I run my finger across the spatula, you can see that it leaves a lane. Now I know that my pastry cream is completely ready. I am going to transfer it to this bowl and then cover it with a sheet of parchment paper to prevent skin from forming on the surface as it cools. I'm going to transfer this to the refrigerator and let it cool for a few hours so it thickens and firms up beautifully. Now that my cranberry curd and my pastry cream have cooled completely, you can see that they've thickened. I like Biscoff cookies in this dessert because Biscoff cookies taste like Thanksgiving. It's got those warm spices in there. I want a mixture of large crushed cookies as well as some fine powder. It's also a lot of fun. What I love about parfaits is that they are multi-layered desserts. First, I'm going to put the layer of this beautiful, bright cranberry curd. Next goes in the pastry cream. I'm going to spoon out some of the crushed Biscoff cookies and sprinkle that on top. Another layer of cranberry curd on top and the pastry cream again. Some of the larger chunks of the cookies. It's beautiful, and this dessert, the best part is that it is light and refreshing because of the cranberries, tartness, the sweetness of the spices, and the warmth that they bring in, and it's my favorite way to end a Thanksgiving meal. I love how tart that cranberry curd is. I know. And then the spices come through too. Yeah, I just feel it's like a nice end to a really rich meal. If there's one dessert you have to eat tonight, that's it. Thankfully there's not just one we have to eat. You get to eat them all. Morgan, what are you trying next? Oh, I'm going for the chocolate cake. I feel like it looks so good and I feel like it's such a tragedy that there's not usually chocolate on a Thanksgiving dessert. When you hear gluten-free cake, you probably think of something that's very dry, crumbly. But today, I'm going to teach you how to make this chocolate miso caramel cake that is gluten-free, but it's delicious, moist, and it's going to be for all your friends, whether they're gluten-free or not. Here we have half a cup of super-fine brown rice flour. It's going to give you a very tender and not crumbly cake. We're going to mix in a third of a cup of cornstarch, which is going to lighten the cake, and then one teaspoon of baking powder. And one teaspoon of table salt. Now we're going to mix two ounces of chopped chocolate, quarter cup of cocoa powder. We have one cup of boiling water. The boiling water is actually going to bloom our cocoa powder, which intensifies its flavor. And we're going to just whisk it until it's all melted together. And to this we're going to add quarter cup of olive oil. It really keeps it moist for longer. Three quarters of a cup of dark brown sugar. And two teaspoons of vanilla extract and then we're going to add our dry ingredients into it. We're going to mix everything up and you're going to see that this is a very thin batter. Actually having a thin batter in this case is going to allow for the cake to be really moist. We have a cake pan, an 8-inch cake pan that's been lined with a piece of parchment paper and greased. Pour the cake batter into it. Our oven is preheated to 325 degrees. Bake it for about 25 to 28 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Here it is, nice and done. At this point we're going to let the cake cool in the pan for about 20 minutes. In the meantime we're going to make a coconut miso caramel. We have a small saucepan and we're going to mix half a cup of granulated sugar with two tablespoons of water. We're going to cook this about four to six minutes. Usually for caramel you have heavy cream. We're going to make sort of a variation of that and we have two tablespoons of coconut milk. We're going to add one tablespoon of olive oil. One teaspoon of vanilla extract, and one teaspoon of white miso paste, and quarter teaspoon of salt. The miso is actually key here because it's going to add that umami, salty flavor to the caramel that's going to mimic a little bit of that dairy flavor. We're going to microwave this for 30 seconds. Our ingredients are warm, but they're not dissolved, so I'm going to give this a quick whisk. We also want to break down the little miso paste. Okay this is ready. Now our caramel, it's almost ready. I'm going to give it a little bit of a swirl. What happens is the edges start to caramelize faster than the center. You want to move that really ready caramel to the center so it picks up everything else. As you can see it's going super fast and smoking a little bit. And we're going to off the heat add our coconut. Careful because this burns. Okay it's really beautiful actually. All right and we're going to pour it into Our bowl and we're going to let it cool completely for about 30 minutes. You can make this caramel a day in advance and keep it in the refrigerator and then just microwave it for a few seconds to loosen it again and bring it back to room temperature. And now it's time to unmold our chocolate cake. You got to be very careful with this because it is a delicate crumb still and it is still warm. Remove the parchment paper gently and then we're going to use the other rack to help us flip it over again. There we go. Now this is going to cool completely for two hours. Now that our cake is cooled and our caramel is cooled, we're going to make the last layer which is the chocolate ganache. We have six ounces of finely chopped chocolate and three quarters of a cup of coconut milk. We're going to microwave this for one minute. Our coconut milk is nice and hot and we're going to pour it over our chopped chocolate. This is bittersweet chocolate. I'm going to stir everything together. I prefer to use a spatula to stir everything together. I don't like to use a whisk at this point because it incorporates too much air. I'm going to add one teaspoon of vanilla extract and an eighth of a teaspoon of table salt. You see at this point it's a little bit runny, so I'm going to put it in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes and it should be nice and spreadable. Just move your spatula around and make swirls, which I think is, like, the best part of assembling this cake. And then drizzle this caramel on top. I'm going to drip some caramel on the sides as well. You can never have too much caramel. We're going to top it with the toasted hazelnuts for crunch and flavor. And finally, we're going to do a little sprinkle of flaky sea salt, and there we have it. A moist, decadent, gluten-free chocolate miso caramel cake that everybody can enjoy at the table. I know you didn't grow up with Thanksgiving, but you also have a beautiful family. Did they get into Thanksgiving and did they want you to cook it? We actually cook for everybody. Everybody wants to come to our house. Is that right? Yeah, for real. We tried all the turkeys all the way. Yeah? What's your favorite one? Fried. It's so good. Brian, these bars, should I dig in with my hands or a fork? The choice is yours. I mean, they're a little bit sticky because they're coated in caramel, so I like to use a fork at the dinner table, but at night on the couch alone, I'll use my hands. You know, I love apple pies, but I'm not a big fan of the labor that it takes to make an apple pie, so this is a dessert that you get all the great things about an apple pie, but it's a quick, easy fix. We're going to start off by making the crust. Three and three quarter cups of all-purpose flour here. Two cups of packed dark brown sugar. I like to use dark brown sugar because it's got those caramel notes to it. One and a half teaspoons of table salt. One and a half teaspoons of baking powder. And three quarters of teaspoon of baking soda. I like to mix all the dry ingredients together first. So once this is all combined, we'll add in three sticks of melted butter. Don't be cheap with butter. You gotta add three sticks or it doesn't work. As this starts to combine, it's going to get almost like a crumble topping texture. So a little bit dry, not necessarily a dough, but it'll come together. And you shouldn't have any dry bits of flour in there. This kind of texture right here almost looks like the texture of wet sand. All right, before we add this mixture to the pan, we're going to reserve two cups of it. And we're going to use that later for our crumb topping. This pan has been lined with what we call a foil sling. So it's just basically two pieces of foil that cover the entire bottom of the pan. So we can then later on lift the bars out of the pan easily. We sprayed this down with some non-stick pan spray. Once it's distributed evenly, we can go ahead and start pressing it in. You could use your hands for this, or sometimes I use the bottom of a measuring cup. Pack it down really evenly. Once this is all done, we're gonna throw it into a 350 degree oven and let it go until it's pale golden brown. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes. So this is going to be our crumb topping and before we continue we're going to throw this in the refrigerator. So we're going to peel three pounds of apples and slice them thin. We're going to make our apple filling. We're using Granny Smith because they have a nice tart flavor and they also hold up well on the bake. Slice these quarter inch thick so I'll just work around the core. You want to keep it about around a quarter of an inch otherwise they'll start to break down too much. I like a little variance in the size because then you get some that are a little bit more mushy, some a little bit more More al dente and the dessert gets a little bit more texture. So this is a relatively sweet dessert. You know, we have a little bit of caramel and brown sugar. The Granny Smith is nice and bright. There's a little bit of lemon juice in there, and the lemon zest really helps lighten it up. So we'll just throw these into our bowl. We're going to add a tablespoon of lemon zest. Using both the lemon zest and the juice gives you a double hit of lemon. Then we're going to cut it in half, and we'll throw it in our handy-dandy juicer here and just give it a squeeze. We're going to measure out two tablespoons of juice. Third of a cup of dark brown sugar, and I like to use the dark brown sugar because it's much more caramely than light brown sugar. And one teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Cinnamon and apples is such a great pairing. And a quarter teaspoon of table salt. And add a half cup of caramel. That is everything. We can just go ahead and stir this all together. All right, the crust has been cooling for about 20 minutes, and now we can add our apple mixture. It looks a little bit chunky right now, but these apples, as they cook, will start to melt and kind of stick together. So once these are nice and even, go ahead and take our crumb topping that we refrigerated earlier, just go ahead and start sprinkling that over top. And you want this kind of variation in big chunks like this and little smaller, sandier pieces. So now we can just throw this into our oven and let it go for another hour or so until it's nicely browned on top. All right, so these bars have been cooling for a good four hours, so we can pull them out using our foil sling. This is where this comes in very handy. Just kind of gently tug on it, lift, and extract. And just to separate them from the foil, I like to use an offset spatula and just Slide it underneath, just make sure it's all free, and then push the bars out. And we're gonna go right in half. And the final touch on these apple bars, then give them a drizzle of caramel, and then a little bit of flaky sea salt. This gives it a little bit of savoriness. So just sprinkle this on there. There you have it, a simpler alternative to a caramel apple pie. I mean you like lived all over the place growing up, like how did Thanksgiving sort of start for you? Yeah, most of the Thanksgivings we had, you know, that I remember were when we were living down south. So my mom would make all the southern side dishes, although she was from New York. But my mom was a world traveler, so she would also sneak in a couple of things like get a jar of kimchi on the table because that's what she wanted to have with it. Wow. So she was the biggest influence in, you know, just kind of me starting to take liberties with Thanksgiving, you know. Alright guys, I'm going to get sappy again. Sorry, we made it through the whole meal. But I just want to say I feel really lucky to know each of you, and you bring so much amazing stuff to my life on a one-on-one basis, so it's really special to get everyone at the same table, bringing your own dishes and talking about them, sharing all your past and your history, and I hope this is just the first of many, many of these Friendsgivings that we do. So cheers. Thank you guys for coming. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.