No-Bake Chocolate Cheese Cake Pie
All beginner cooks are terrified of making a pie. If you have zero experience at pie making, a frozen or “no-bake” pie recipe (using a pre-made crust) is a good place to start. (The ten no-bake pies listed below are all perfect recipes for a beginner cook!)
Buying or Making The Crust
Many ice cream pies or no-bake pies call for a graham cracker crust. You can buy a graham cracker pie shell in the baking section of the grocery store or try making a graham cracker crust yourself. (These cracker crusts can also be made with many other sweet cracker/cookies like oreo cookies, ginger snaps, vanilla wafers, etc.)
Or you can buy a ready-made pie shell, usually found in the freezer section of the grocery store.
When making an un-cooked pie (like an ice cream pie), these pie shells will have to get baked and cooled before filling them.
For those of you ready to tackle the pie dough making challenge, our friend Heidi at the Ward Street Bistro has a wonderful pie crust recipe that does not require “rolling out” the dough.
This “Press in the Pan” pie dough recipe looks great for anyone intimated by a rolling pin!
Easy Pie Recipes:
Ice Cream Pie
You can concoct a very simple pie without a recipe. Buy a ready-made pie crust (or make a graham cracker one) and a tub of ice cream or frozen yogurt. Set the ice cream out to soften. Once you can scoop it easily, fill the pie crust, smooth the top and add any toppings you want (nuts, whipped cream, chocolate sauce). Then put it back into the freezer until serving time.
Pudding Pies
Similarly, you can make a custom pie with pudding and fruit. Just buy a box of pudding mix – chocolate, vanilla, or another flavor – follow the directions, and pour it into a ready-made pie crust. Top it with sliced bananas, strawberries, or whatever you like. Refrigerate the pie until you are ready to serve it.
Frozen Lemonade Pie
The folks over at Baked Perfection tried this recipe (from the Food Network show Down Home With the Neely’s) for a Fourth of July party and fell in love with it. Set in a graham cracker crust, its sweet, lemony filling calls for frozen lemonade concentrate, whipped cream and sweetened condensed milk. An easy alternative to a baked lemon meringue pie!
Nutter Butter Frozen Pie
Hello, peanut butter fans? It’s your dream pie calling. This one has a crust made of crushed Nutter Butter cookies (but feel free to substitute a pre-made one) and a frosty peanut butter and cream cheese filling.
Frozen Oreo Pie
The name says it all!
Frozen Blueberry Pie
This pie is not frozen in the sense that it sits in the freezer; it’s a baked blueberry pie that calls for frozen blueberries and a frozen pie crust. I’m including it because summer is the time for blueberries (even frozen) and this is a very easy version of your typical fruit pie that calls for crust made from scratch.
Chocolate Fudge Pie
One bite of this decadent pie and you’ll never look at silken tofu the same way again. It’s one of the keys to this pie’s creamy fudginess.
No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Banana Tofu Pie
Here’s another recipe that involves tofu. This pie uses either a homemade or store-bought graham cracker crust to hold an intense filling. It takes about 15 minutes to make, then goes in the fridge or freezer for a couple of hours.
No-Bake Mango Pie
Anything mango is great in the summer. This one contains mango puree which you can buy in a can or make your own.
How to Peel a Mango
No-Bake Key Lime Pie
A can of frozen limeade concentrate is what gives this simple pie its lime flavor.
Easy Coconut Banana Cream Pie takes just 20 minutes to make! This pie will need 4 hours in the refrigerator to set. It’s worth the wait!
My No-Bake Chocolate Cheese Cake Pie (shown above) is a rich chocolaty cheese cake pie that will quickly become a family favorite. It does involves whipping your own heavy cream. (For a quick review on whipping cream, check out my post on How to Make Whipped Cream)
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Shaula said:
Some of the best pie crust I’ve ever eaten was in Japan. For a work project (long story), my two (male) colleagues and I baked 36 pumpkin pies from scratch over 5 days (after work, in 4 gas ovens, in a community center).
The men volunteered to do the pie crust: they were as meticulous with the measurements and the instructions not to overwork the dough as if they were working with high explosives. And the crust was remarkable!
I suppose the moral to the story there is that if I actually paid attention to the recipes I’m allegedly following, my food would turn out better, too!
I find that most of the pre-made pie crusts in the stores have ingredients that I don’t want or are too high in sugar. I keep meaning to experiment with phylo pastry…I’m sure there’s got to be a good way to rig it up into easy, sugar-free pastry crust, too.
I think your suggestions for freezer and refrigerator pies are thoughtful and timely. Who wants to turn on the oven in summer weather? But it is still nice to be able to offer guests a refreshing dessert.