It’s safe to say that pie is one of the most well-loved desserts around. It’s incredibly versatile, and you can add just about any ingredient to it.
While many pies require an extensive cooking time, egg pie does not. In fact, this creamy and silky-smooth pie can be made without an oven!
All you will need is to get a little crafty with some instruments you may already have at home.
How to Prepare Egg Pie
The ingredients to egg pie are pretty self-explanatory. You will obviously need eggs, but you will also need flour, powdered sugar, salted butter, evaporated milk, condensed milk, and vanilla. Some recipes may even call for nutmeg.
If you are going to use the nutmeg, try and look for fresh nutmeg as opposed to powdered nutmeg. Fresh nutmeg just simply tastes a whole lot better.
After you’ve gathered all of your ingredients, it’s time to put them all together. While you can purchase a premade pie crust, you can also make one from scratch.
To do this, mix up your flour, powdered sugar, and butter until it ends up in crumbles. Then you can add it into your pan. It’s as easy as that!
Once you have your dough mixture ready to go, put it into your baking sheet and let it sit in the fridge for a few minutes. While you wait for that, you can work on the rest of your pie.
So now you can finally start working on the good stuff – the pie mixture. For this, you will need the evaporated milk, condensed milk, vanilla, and the eggs. After mixing it all up, it should be ready to pour into the dough.
Make sure your eggs are whipped into the rest of the mixture thoroughly. Although it is egg pie, you don’t exactly want it to taste like an omelet.
Now, here comes the tough part. If you don’t have an oven, how can you cook your pie? It’s a question that plagues many bakers far and wide.
The good news is, there are other alternatives to using the oven. If you have a steamer, you can use that in place of an oven. Even a blow dryer could do the trick!
If you don’t have a steamer, you can also use a pan filled with hot water. You can use a stand to place in the middle of the pan, then place your pie on top of it.
Afterward, cover it up. The steam from the pan should be able to cook your pie in about 30 to 45 minutes.
You can also make cute and mini versions of this pie, all you have to do is get smaller pie crusts and use an ice cream scoop to get the mixture into the pie crust. Then, you can proceed to cook it like normal.
History of Egg Pie
Egg pie can also be known as custard pie, due to the fact that the filling is made of exactly just that. They have a long history, dating back to 1307 BC. It is believed that the ancient Greeks were some of the first people to have originated pie pastry.
However, many people also think of the Philippines when they think of egg pie. This is because egg pie is a common delicacy there.
This is because way back when, many Filipinos used canned evaporated milk in their food because there was no access to refrigeration.
As a result, egg pie became common at events such as birthday parties and holiday celebrations. The only difference between Filipino egg pie and American egg pie is that the top layer of the pie is usually browned.
This is done using egg whites, which are folded into the custard mixture before cooking.
Other Types of No-Bake Pies
Egg pies aren’t the only type of pie that can be easily made without an oven handy. When you can’t find the time to cook but want to make your loved ones a tasty treat they’ll love, no-bake pies are the perfect solution.
Let’s start with Banana Crème Pie! This is a classic and a favorite among many. The good news is, it can be made without an oven. Even the pie is as easy as – well, pie.
To make the pie crust, take some of your favorite graham crackers and crumble them up either in a blender or using a rolling pin. After you’ve molded the graham crackers into your pie crust, you can slice up some bananas and place them over the pie crust, as an added layer to your already delicious pie.
Next, you’re going to want to start working on the filling, which involves a pudding mixture. Make the pudding like you normally would, and then leave it in the fridge to cool down and settle.
If you want to make it even more tasty, add a few drops of vanilla extract to it.
Finally, all you have to do is place the pudding on top of the bananas. If you want to add an extra layer of bananas to the top, you can. Don’t forget the whipped cream!
If you prefer strawberries over bananas, have we got a pie for you! A strawberry yogurt pie is just as easy to make and also requires no baking.
For this pie, you will need just a few ingredients. These include: Nilla wafers, unsalted butter, sugar, strawberries, mascarpone cheese, Greek yogurt, and powdered sugar.
Like with the banana pie, you are going to want to start by crushing up the Nilla wafers to use as your crust. Use melted butter and sugar to pour over the cookie crumbs so that they stick together.
Once you have your pie crust ready, you can place it in the fridge to cool. Although this process takes about an hour, you can use this time to prep the rest of your ingredients. First, start by slicing up strawberries and putting them into a bowl.
Next up, you are going to want to take your mascarpone cheese and mix that up with the Greek yogurt and powdered sugar. Once you have your mixture, you can begin layering using the strawberries and the yogurt mix.
After you have your pie layered successfully, throw it in the fridge for a few hours so that it has time to get firm. While you can eat it right away after making it, it could be a bit messier and harder to eat.
Make sure you serve your slices of pie with some strawberries on top!
Final Thoughts
As you can see, egg pie isn’t the only type of pie you can make without cooking. With egg pie, however, you will need to heat it up some way or another as it contains raw egg. If you don’t, you could risk getting salmonella.
If you don’t have an oven handy, you can always improvise with a handheld steamer. If not, use the hot water in a pan trick we mentioned earlier.
No matter which way you put it, it’s safe to say you’re well on your way to having some delectable slices of pie!
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.