When it comes to fall comfort foods, nothing takes the cake quite like a slice of homemade pumpkin pie.
Celebrity chefs certainly feel the same way, which is why so many have their own pumpkin-pie recipes.
To find out which are worth trying this fall, I tested pumpkin-pie recipes from culinary legends Bobby Flay, Dominique Ansel, and Alton Brown.
Here’s how the pies turned out — and which recipe I’ll totally be coming back to.
Flay’s signature pumpkin-pie recipe has many steps, but simple ingredients
Though he’s known as a grill master, Flay can throw down when it comes to pies.
His recipe on the Food Network website has several steps, but it seemed easy to organize and measure all the ingredients in advance.
The crust and filling ingredients seemed pretty standard: graham-cracker crumbs, butter, sugar, ground cinnamon, eggs, dark-brown sugar, granulated sugar, pumpkin purée, heavy cream, ground nutmeg, ground ginger, ground cloves, vanilla bean, and salt
The recipe also called for homemade bourbon-maple whipped cream, made with cold heavy cream, grade-B maple syrup, and bourbon.
It sounded tasty. To make it, I needed grade-B maple syrup — but I learned that label no longer exists. So I stuck with grade A.
The pie came together easily and smelled delicious
Since I measured everything in advance, making the filling was as simple as pouring and whisking the ingredients together, then straining it for a super-smooth center.
The only hiccup I had was that I don’t own a food processor. I used a small blender/food-chopper that didn’t quite work as well.
That made it tricky to integrate the melted butter with the crushed graham cracker.
Overall, the hands-on part was quick and easy. After 10 minutes of baking, my crust was set and ready to be filled.
The recipe produced far more filling than I needed, so I froze the leftovers for a future pie.
I baked the pie for about 90 minutes. It came out golden, with a flawless top — no cracks here.
The whipped cream and the pie went together perfectly
I was impressed with how well the pie held its shape as I cut into it. Though the crust along the bottom was probably thicker than it should’ve been, I was happy it didn’t crumble and fall apart.
The whipped cream alone was incredibly delicious. I could taste every element: the cream, the vanilla, the bourbon, and the maple syrup.
As for the pie, the filling had a light pumpkin flavor with a nice balance of sweetness and spice. With the whipped cream, the dessert had the perfect balance of vanilla, maple syrup, warm pumpkin, and spices.
The graham-cracker crust was fine, but I wished it were crunchier — I was disappointed by its slightly soggy bottom.
The edges were crisp, but they weren’t as flavorful as I would’ve liked.
Ansel’s pumpkin-pie recipe is heavy on the ginger and calls for a dough crust
I followed a recipe for silky pumpkin pie with gingerbread crust from the famous pastry chef and inventor of the Cronut, as published on British Vogue.
For the pie and crust, I needed light-brown sugar, all-purpose flour, butter, cinnamon, baking soda, lemon juice, milk, ginger (fresh and ground), vanilla bean, nutmeg, cornstarch, pumpkin puree, granulated sugar, cream, egg yolks, and sea salt.
My first concern was how much ginger — fresh and ground — it called for. I like ginger, but I don’t love it in large quantities.
I was also expecting the pie to have a pretty rich center, since this recipe calls for a lot of egg yolks — about six or seven — in the filling.
For the crust, I had to battle with the dough
Since it involved making a dough-based crust, this recipe required a lot of steps. I’d recommend making this the day before if you need it for a certain occasion.
It took me a long time to grate the fresh ginger for the crust, so I ended up cutting the amount to about 1 ½ tablespoons from 2 tablespoons.
After I mixed the crust ingredients and let it chill, it was time to roll. I cut the dough and put aside one half, which I originally planned to freeze for later.
Unfortunately, rolling the chilled dough was a disaster. My first half kept sticking to the rolling pin and my surface even though I had sprinkled flour on both and my hands before I started.
I got frustrated and scrapped this half, thankful to still have the second half. I kept this dough loosely wrapped in plastic wrap to help prevent it from sticking to the rolling pin.
This worked somewhat well — until I had to peel the dough from the plastic wrap, and it fell apart.
I wrangled the dough as best as I could and draped it over my pie dish. It didn’t quite fit, so I did my best to patch it together.
Next was the blind bake — when you bake a pie crust before filling it — which made me nervous because the dough was so delicate. I used parchment paper and dry rice to weigh down the crust as it baked.
When I pulled the crust out and removed the rice, most of my dough came up with it. I scraped some of the paper off and mended the crust as best as I could, but this was turning out to be a disaster.
I pressed on and added the filling to the crust anyway. Then it was ready to bake in a 325-degree Fahrenheit oven.
My pie took about 20 minutes longer to bake than the recipe’s maximum estimated time of 35 minutes.
For all the trouble, my pie ended up tasting rather bland
The pie looked OK coming out of the oven. The crust didn’t have a perfectly pinched edge, but at this point, I was glad it had come together at all.
The filling mushroomed above the crust while it was in the oven, then dropped near the end of baking, resulting in several cracks around the pie.
I thought that this pie would hold its shape the best of all three recipes because it had a dough crust, but it fell apart when I cut a slice. The bottom crust was thicker on one side and slightly soggy.
The pumpkin layer tasted strongly of pumpkin — I would’ve loved more sweetness and a bit more spice for a better flavor.
The texture was super smooth and custard-like thanks to the yolks. Fortunately, the ginger didn’t overpower the pie’s flavor. However, especially given all the work, I wished the crust had more flavor.
For convenience, I swapped fresh pumpkin for canned in Brown’s recipe
Brown’s recipe on the Food Network website requires baking a fresh pumpkin to make a homemade pumpkin purée.
Short on time and not a fan of pumpkin guts, I skipped this and used canned pumpkin purée.
Other ingredients for the pie and crust included things like gingersnap cookies, ground ginger, dark-brown sugar, butter, half-and-half, freshly grated nutmeg, and eggs.
I was surprised to see that this recipe didn’t call for cinnamon, unlike any pumpkin pie I’ve ever made (or eaten). I hoped the nutmeg would make up for it.
Of the 3 recipes, Brown’s was the easiest to follow
The pie’s gingersnap crust was similar to Flay’s graham-cracker one. Without a food processor, it couldn’t come together as well as it should, but it still looked fine and smelled even better.
I pressed it into a pie dish and baked it for about 10 minutes.
Without fresh pumpkin, the filling was easy to make. I warmed the pumpkin purée and half-and-half, along with nutmeg and salt, on the stove, then whisked the mixture in a bowl with brown sugar and eggs.
I let the filling and the crust cool for 15 minutes, then combined them and baked my pie for 45 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
There were no mishaps here; the process was straightforward and quick. Obviously, if I had made the pumpkin purée from scratch, it would’ve taken much longer.
I loved the flavor of the gingersnap crust
After baking the pie, I noticed it had a bit of liquid pooling on the surface. Otherwise, the surface was blemish-free.
This sturdy crust held everything in place as I removed a slice from the pan. The clear definition between the crust and the pumpkin filling in each slice made for a really nice presentation.
The filling could’ve used a bit more spice — cinnamon, perhaps — but it was still delicious. The pumpkin flavor came through and was sweet.
The ginger flavor in the crust came through in every bite.
It was still slightly soggier than I had hoped, even along the edges, but I was worried that much longer in the oven would’ve resulted in a burnt crust.
I’d definitely make Flay’s recipe again — especially the maple whipped cream
I loved the filling and whipped cream from Flay’s recipe, and overall, the pie was simple to put together. The only thing I would change is making the crust more flavorful, perhaps by adding spices.
Brown’s crust was delicious, and the filling’s texture was perfect. With a food processor, I think I could get the crust to have a better texture. This recipe resulted in a pie that looked as good on Instagram as it did in real life.
Truthfully, I would love to try Flay’s filling and whipped cream with Brown’s gingersnap crust for the ultimate pumpkin pie.
Unfortunately, I can’t see myself attempting Ansel’s recipe again.
Check out the other celebrity-chef recipes we’ve put head-to-head so far.
This story was originally published on November 21, 2022, and most recently updated on October 12, 2026.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post I tried pumpkin-pie recipes from 3 celebrity chefs. The best was easy to make — and beat the one from a baking legend. appeared first on Business Insider.
