Thanksgiving is the humble pie’s time to shine. Whether apple, pumpkin, pecan or sweet potato, the flaky dessert adorns the dining tables of countless homes during the holiday, daring families already stuffed with turkey to pass it up.
But around Pennsylvania Dutch country, there’s another signature pie: the shoofly. This molasses-forward treat was invented sometime after the Civil War, when cast-iron stoves and baking powder and soda revolutionized American kitchens. The shoofly pie, food historian William Woys Weaver writes, was a marriage of the old and new, as the Pennsylvania Dutch introduced a traditional molasses crumb cake to the Anglo-American pie shell. It was served at the U.S. Centennial in Philadelphia in 1876 as “centennial cake.”
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Shoofly pie was a winter dish, since molasses would ferment in warm weather. The old story goes that the sticky-sweet molasses used to attract flies, which needed to be shooed away, giving the pie its name. It was cheap to make, given its basic ingredients, and usually served at breakfast with coffee or schnapps (for digestion).
Bend the rules slightly by serving it as a post-dinner dessert at Thanksgiving. This recipe comes from a long-time Amish vendor at Reading Terminal Market, Beiler’s Bakery. It is reprinted with permission from Reading Terminal Market Cookbook:
Beiler’s Shoofly Pie
Ingredients
Pastry crust for a 9-inch pie plate, from a standard recipe or storebought
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup warm water
1 egg, beaten
1 cup molasses
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup shortening
Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry crust. In a medium bowl, dissolve the baking soda in the water, then mix in the egg and molasses. Place the flour, sugar and shortening in another bowl, and mix until crumbly. Mix 1/2 cup of the crumb mixture into the molasses mixture, stir and pour into the prepared pie shell. Sprinkle the remaining crumbs evenly over the top.
Bake for 15 minutes, reduce heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and bake for 30 minutes more, or until the center of the pie is firm.
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