Marie Callender’s Deep Dish Pie Crusts, reviewed

I usually try to make my pie crusts from scratch when I bake. It may seem like a challenging proposition at first, but once you have made a few, they’re easy to put together and they keep for a couple of days in the fridge after making them (longer in the freezer), I can even make them in advance and use them. That said, there are always times where you need the convenience of a premade pie crust. Marie Callender’s has offered frozen desserts at the grocery store for some time (in addition to their fresh baked pies in their restaurants) and also has a line of frozen Deep Dish Pie Crusts available.

The pie crust that Marie Callender’s uses for their own pies is good, and the frozen version didn’t let me down. It’s made with shortening, so while it doesn’t have a particularly strong flavor on its own, it is flakey and extremely tender. In fact, it has an almost melt in your mouth quality to it. It also cooks up to be very crisp – exactly how I want my crust to be to create a contrast with the pie filling. You can bake the crusts from frozen, but I find that I always get better results after defrosting a frozen crust and baked these crusts after they were close to room temperature.

One of the best parts about these crusts is the tin that they come in. It is a solid pie plate, not the flimsy foil kind that you find beneath store-bought graham cracker crusts. This means that it is actually easy to put the pie in the oven, take it out again and serve it without needing an extra baking sheet or serving tray just to support the weight of the pie and prevent the tin from bending in half (yes, this has happened to me with heavy pie fillings).