No Thanksgiving dinner is complete without pie. Duh. But next week, may we suggest ditching the typical pumpkin, pecan and apple flavors? This year, how about cinnamon bun pie? Chocolate and peanut butter? Maybe black-bottom pecan, instead? Whatever your choice, your family and friends will love you for it. And if not, switch back to apple next year.
Peanut Butter Pie from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
700 W. 125th St.
212-694-1777
Made with an Oreo cookie crust, cream cheese and peanut butter, and garnished with chopped peanuts, Dinosaur’s sweet, rich Peanut Butter Pie is nothing if not decadent. $30, and the pie can be sliced for 8-10 servings or can be ordered uncut (24 hours in advance)
Pear-Apple-Cranberry Pie from Black Hound
Black Hound, 170 Second Ave.,
212-979-9505,
Packed with Bartlett pears, Granny Smith apples, dried cranberries, anise and spices in a lattice-top cookie dough crust, Black Hound’s Pear-Apple-Cranberry Pie is pretty perfect. A safe bet for tough crowds, Black Hound’s pies are made with a cookie dough crust — slightly sweet and subtly nontraditional. $23 (6-inch), $32 (9-inch).
Black Bottom Pecan Pie from Magnolia Bakery
Magnolia Bakery, multiple locations,
Best known for their cupcakes (and buttercream frosting!), it only make sense that Magnolia Bakery has created an even sweeter version of pecan pie. Theirs, the Black Bottom Pecan Pie, takes the pecan filling and mixes it with chocolate, then bakes it into a homemade crust. $30
Salty Honey Pie from Four and Twenty Blackbirds
439 Third Ave., Gowanus
718-499-2917
Emily Elsen, one half of the uberpopular Four and Twenty Blackbirds, calls their Salty Honey Pie “very popular and definitely unique.” Made with sweet honey custard and sprinkled with sea salt flakes, the popularity is a (borderline addictive) slice of gooey bliss. $35, whole pies available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Cinnamon Bun Pie from Momofuku Milk Bar
Momofuku Milk Bar
multiple locations
The best thing about Momofuku’s Cinnamon Bun Pie is that it doubles as a breakfast pastry the next morning. (Yes, you will want it twice in 12 hours.) From the mind of Christina Tosi comes this holiday creation, made with sweet bread crust and layers of brown sugar, brown butter and cheesecake filling, topped with a cinnamon-oat streusel and drizzled with melted brown butter. $44
Also notable
Francois Payard’s Chocolate Cranberry Tart, a vanilla cranberry pound cake made with cranberry gelee and dark chocolate bavaroise. For six people, $36; eight people, $48, or 10 people, $60. Available at FP Patisserie; see www.payard.com for location and ordering information.
Leave it to Pichet Ong to put his sweet spin on the pecan pie at Sugar and Plumm. “I love pecan pie and I love chocolate pie,” he says. “Here is a mash-up pie of both — gooey honey and caramelized brown sugar filling, lots of nuts and chunks of chocolate that melts when warmed up.” $32 at Sugar and Plumm, 377 Amsterdam Ave., 212-787-8778, Sugarandplumm.com
From pastry chef Sharon Robinson, Great Performance’s White Chocolate Pumpkin Pie is anything but ordinary. $24, www.greatperformances.com
