Cream Cheese Pie Crust

This makes 1 crust. Double the ingredients for a double crust.

Combine the flour, salt, sugar, cold butter and cold cream cheese in a food processor. Pulse the ingredients together, gradually adding the cider vinegar and the ice water until the dough begins to clump together.

Then form the ingredients into a ball and flatten it into a thick disk. The less you work with the dough, the better.

Prepare a pastry cloth board (a Bethany Housewares Pastry Cloth & Board set, often used to make lefse; I use this board to roll out all of my pie crusts!) by rubbing flour into the cloth and then sprinkling it with sugar. Place the dough ball in the center of the cloth-covered board. Make sure to give the dough a heavy dusting of flour and sugar. Then roll out the dough according to the size of the pie plate. If you don’t have a board like this, roll this dough out like you would any other; just add sugar to the flour you use to roll it out.

Slide your hands gently under the rolled-out dough and carefully lift and place the dough into the pie plate. Then adjust the dough until it is centered.

Once the crust is in the pie plate, trim off the excess dough (leaving an inch or 2 at the edge to curl back under). Then use a spoon and your fingers to press and flute the edges of the crust.

Notes:

If you have to pre-bake this crust, place it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes prior to baking. Then line the bottom of the crust with wax paper/parchment paper and evenly cover the bottom of the pie crust with uncooked beans or ceramic pie weights before baking. I normally bake this at 400ºF for 15 minutes, and if it is not fully cooked, put it in again 1 minute at a time until you get the results you want.

It really depends on what your pie recipe calls for. For example; when making my pumpkin cream pie, I put the pie crust in for 10 minutes at 400ºF, add the filling, then put the entire pie back in for an hour. For my banana cream pie, I fully bake the pie crust first and it never sees the oven again after the pie filling is added. And for my apple pie, there is no pre-baking the crust.