Author: Carma Spence

After you’ve pulled together a perfect pie — an ideal crust, a luscious filling — you need to make it look beautiful. There are lots of ways to garnish your pie, from the traditional to the clever. Here I’ll share a few ideas that you can run with.

Traditional Pie Garnish Ideas

Whipped topping, either freshly made whipped cream or defrosted Cool Whip Topping, makes a nice garnish. You can pipe some along the edges of a pie to make a nice display before serving, or dollop some on top of the slice once it is plated.

Ice cream on the side, although not necessarily a garnish, also spruces up a serving of pie. Vanilla is customary, but depending on the flavor of pie you are serving, you can try other flavors such as chocolate, pistachio, pumpkin or eggnog.

Either of these decorations will go well partnered with other pie toppings, such as a crumble topping. Crumble topping are usually made with oats, granola and, on occasion Grape Nuts cereal. Sometimes they are simply biscuit mix and butter cut together with a little sugar and cinnamon.

Fancy Pie Garnish Ideas

The most common fancy pie topping is a lattice. This is where you take strips of pie crust and weave a lattice atop the pie. With covered pies, it is important to have holes for steam to escape. Some people simply poke a fork in the top, while other get artistic and cut out shapes for the holes.

You can also use cookie cutters to create unique designs atop your pie with extra bits of pie crust. The shapes can be inspired by a holiday, or they can be letters to form a special message. You could also make shapes that mimic the contents of the filling, for example, cherry shapes atop a cherry pie.

Creative Pie Garnish Ideas

But you don’t need to go with the obvious toppings and decorations just discussed. Why not get a little more creative? Try chopped nuts. Perhaps a specially flavored or candied nut might go well with your pie filling.

Pie Garnish Considerations

However you decide to garnish your pie, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind:

Will the pie garnish work with the preparation method of the pie? This means if the declaration needs to be baked, you probably won’t want to use it on a no-bake pie. The reverse is also true.

Will the pie garnish enhance or detract from the pie filling? Remember, the core of a good pie is its filling. You don’t want your topping — or crust — to overpower the filling!

Will the pie garnish look just as good on a slice as it does the entire pie? If the whole pile looks great, but when served by the slice looks awful, you’ve done something wrong. It can be hard enough getting your crust and filling to survive being sliced, don’t add another layer of things that can go wrong.

Create Your Own Unique Pie!

Does pie making daunt you? Are you wary of deviating from any pie-recipe you find, for fear that you’ll ruin the flavor of the resulting pie?

It doesn’t have to be that way!

Pie-Palooza 2017 is brought to you by Your Perfect Pie, a cookbook that breaks down pies into easily made component parts so you can unleash your pie-making creativity. Available on Amazon in both print and Kindle formats. Grab your copy today and start creating your perfect pie!