Baking is an art, without a doubt. There are plenty of hard desserts out there, and even the most standard of your average sweets often has at least one complex component. Take pies, for instance. Pie crusts are notoriously hard to handle, especially if you want to really nail that buttery, flaky crust. But pie crust doesn’t have to be the insurmountable hurdle it sometimes seems. In fact, the next time you feel like making one, you only need to reach for three ingredients: cookie crumbs, confectioners’ sugar, and melted butter.
The basic formula for a three-ingredient crust is pretty simple across the board. First, you take your cookie of choice and crush it into a fine crumb. Some people like putting their cookies in a bag and smashing it with a rolling pin or glass, but it’s totally feasible (and popular with some recipes, like graham cracker crust) to just dump your cookies into a food processor or blender and let that do the work for you. You need both the confectioners’ sugar and melted butter to bind the crumbs together, so don’t skip out on either. For every 2 cups of crumbs, you’ll want about 6 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup of confectioners’ sugar. Mix the sugar and butter in with your crumbs until you have a solid dough, and then dump it into a pie tin and press it flat with a glass bowl, cup, or another baking dish. Bake it according to the recipe, and voila! A perfect and perfectly delicious crust.
Taking your cookie crumb pie crust to the next level
As mentioned, graham cracker pie crusts are pretty dang popular, but you don’t have to stop there. You can use so many different types of cookies for your pie crust that you’ll never run out of new combinations to try. There are a few key things to keep in mind, though.
First, never use a moist cookie. The key to this pie crust lies in the combination of butter, sugar, and a dry cookie crumb, so you want to choose things like wafer cookies, ginger snaps, crunchy sugar cookies, Oreos, and digestives. No matter what cookie you use and whether or not you have a food processor, be sure you grind them to a fine crumb. If the crumbs are too big, your crust will crumble under the slightest bit of pressure.
For an even more elevated crust, use top-shelf butter and try browning it for some extra flavor. The butter’s really going to stand out in a list of only three ingredients, so select a good one. Make sure your crust is completely flat in the pan before you bake it, so avoid using your hands or not pressing it down across the whole surface. The confectioners’ sugar will bake in the oven and create an even more sturdy crust, and together, the whole thing will bring a symphony of delicious flavor to your next pie.
