Every Pie Recipe You Need, from Savory to Sweet and Everything In Between

So you forgot to make (or buy) pie crust. Never mind—you don’t really need one when you have a fantastic filling. Angela Pinkerton, pastry chef at San Francisco’s Theorita, gave us this delicate dessert—with toasted pecans for crunch, instead of a crust.

Ice cream pies make ideal desserts for big family dinners, because you can make them days in advance and just haul them out of the freezer right before serving.

We made good old chicken pot pie party-worthy by loading up the filling with fresh vegetables and herbs. For a spooky or Halloween party version, decorate the top with bones and skulls cut from puff pastry.

In the great tradition of citrus pies like lemon cream and key lime, this pie from Pietisserie’s Pastel line is super easy and will stand out on any dessert table. The colorful crust requires you to first bake a large cookie that turns into the crumbles that make the crust.

Yes, this is a galette, but we consider it just a free-form pie. It’s best to poach the pears a day before making the galette.

Why not go for a classic and perfect the apple pie?

We use Mexican limes (the West Coast name for Key limes) to create these creamy pies.

This ice cream pie screams “indulgence,” and it’s somehow also easy to make.

Samosas are individual hand pie–size creations that encase tasty fillings in an equally tasty crust. The choices for fillings are endless, including the popular spiced potatoes, spiced chickpeas, paneer, and ground lamb. This larger version is great when you’re a bit low on time.

If you don’t want to make a traditional apple pie, try a galette, like this Alice Waters recipe that’s a Chez Panisse staple. You can also make it with other seasonal fruits like pears, peaches, plums, or apricots.

Layers of spiced pumpkin ice cream and vanilla ice cream top gooey caramel on a graham cracker crust. It’s a whole new way to have pumpkin pie.

Crunchy malted milk balls line the bottom of this creamy chocolate malt ice cream pie and a layer of dark chocolate frosting tops it off, along with a pouf of whipped cream and more malted milk balls. Overkill or pure summer joy? You be the judge.

At a little bakery in the eastern Cascades, you’ll find this amazing pie, which has a shortbread-like crust and a Northwest berry filling.

Kulfi, a lusciously dense, almost chewy Indian ice cream, is often flavored with pistachios and cardamom. It inspired this pie. If you’d like your topping to be a true pistachio green, use in-shell roasted pistachios—they tend to retain their color better than the type sold out of the shell.

Zoe Nathan of Santa Monica’s Huckleberry Bakery tops her pies with a variety of cutout shapes; for this one, you’ll need a 2 1/2-in. apple-shaped cookie cutter.

A crunchy, almondy crust of ground-up amaretti cookies holds vanilla ice cream layered with honey-simmered apricots—on the bottom, a puree in the middle, and more puree curlicued over the top. We used an 8-in. cheesecake pan with removable sides, but you could also use a regular 9-in. pie pan and sprinkle the toasted almonds on top instead of packing them onto the outside of the pie.

Feel free to swap in other squash in Michelle McKenzie’s recipe: Sugar Pie comes out sweeter, and canned pumpkin is mellow-tasting, if less distinctive. Shauna Sever, an 18 Reasons instructor, suggested the spicy gingersnap layer.

We adapted this recipe from Devil’s Teeth Baking Company to create a border that shows off the bright filling. To completely cover the pie, just double the topping.

For depth of flavor, Kir Jensen roasts the pecans and hazelnuts before adding them to the filling. She likes to roll her cornmeal pastry extra thick, so it’s more substantial.

Black pepper, nutmeg, and cloves play up the underlying spicy note of blueberries in this pie.

Any berry that grows on thorny canes or trailing vines, called brambles, is considered a brambleberry (raspberries and blackberries are two examples). Mix berries with some sugar and a bit of thickener (flour and tapioca in this case), and you have a very simple pie.

A crisp streusel topping studded with walnuts and pecans perfectly accents tender, sweet peaches.

In our quest for an intensely flavored pie, we’ve poured a thick, creamy bittersweet chocolate custard into an almond-scented cookie-crumb crust, then topped it all with a generous pile of whipped cream.