This dessert combines everyone’s two favorite Thanksgiving activities: giving thanks and eating pie! It’s fun and easy to make personalized pie for Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, or any other holiday. And it’s also a clever way to use up any leftover pie dough! Whether you bake it, buy it, serve it, or gift it, you can pick any pie you like: pumpkin, apple, pecan, whatever is your family’s favorite!
Just roll out the extra pie dough and use mini cookie cutters to punch out letters. (This is a great activity to do with kids, since holidays are all about DIT—Doing It Together!) We opted for “Let’s Give Thanks!” but you could write anything you like, from “I’m Thankful for You” if you’re making a pie as a gift to “Gobble Gobble” if you’re going for a turkey-themed Thanksgiving. And if it’s a pie with a top crust, you could reverse the technique: punch letters out of the crust itself so that the pie peeking through does the spelling.
The same idea works for any holiday or celebration—you could write “I Do” or “True Love” on a buffet of pies at a wedding, or “Happy Birthday” when the person being celebrated prefers pie to cake. If you’re setting out several pies for Thanksgiving dessert, turn the little letters into labels spelling out “pumpkin,” or “sweet potato.” Or, serve mini pies with each guest’s initials on them. And, of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to letters—shapes, animals, symbols, whatever cookie cutters you have, work! You can even make your letters or shapes ahead of time, then decide what to write or decorate with as a fun DIT activity on Thanksgiving day.
If you love the idea of letters, punching out pie crust isn’t your only option. You can also cut mini letters out of sugar cookie dough—although they tend to puff up while baking. But if you’re short on time or pie crust, there are lots of store-bought possibilities.
You might consider
- Fondant letters
- Candy Letters
- Chocolate Crackers
- Cookie Letters
- Piping on letters with store-bought icing
There are other ways to use personalized pies for Thanksgiving to spell out your feelings! Try using our stencil templates to dust on letters or words with powdered sugar. (This is also a great idea for a batch of brownies; you can turn them into a brownie thank you note!) Or, serve pie alongside our Fill-in-the-Pie Game cards, which prompt guests to write what they’re thankful for on a paper slice of pie. You can download the template here.
However you choose to use your words, it will make your pie even sweeter!
For more fun pie ideas, click here.
For more Thanksgiving ideas, click here.
What You’ll Need
- Pie Crust Dough
- Mini Cookie Cutters
- 9” Pie
How-To
Step 1 Decide what you want your pie to say! That could be “Full of Thanks!” or “Happy Birthday!” depending on the occasion.
Step 2 Roll out leftover pie crust dough and punch out letters using mini cookie cutters. Bake as needed.
Step 3 Spell and serve! Arrange pie crust letters on pie so that they write out your message. For some pies, like pumpkin, you’ll be able to place the letters right on top. For pies that have a crust on top, you can either cut out the letters and let the pie peek through, or wait until the pie cools and attach letters using dabs of royal icing or buttercream. Serve and E-N-J-O-Y!
