The holidays sneak up on every single one of us. The best defense is a freezer full of pie dough that's already done the hard work. This is my cream cheese pie dough, butter, cream cheese, flour, and salt — and it's the most forgiving, most versatile pie dough I've ever worked with. The cream cheese is the secret: it adds just enough fat and tang to produce a crust that rolls out beautifully, doesn't rip when you're fitting it into the pan, and caramelizes into something toasty and rich in the oven.
What You'll Love
- Four freezer options, one dough. Raw puck, rolled flat between parchment, fitted in the pan, or par-baked shell — freeze it whichever way suits your schedule and pull it out when you need it.
- Cream cheese changes everything. Replacing half the butter with cream cheese produces a dough that's more forgiving to roll, less likely to rip when fitting into the pan, and richer and more complex in flavor once baked.
- Up to 90 days in the freezer. Properly double-wrapped pie dough keeps for up to 90 days without picking up freezer flavors — make a big batch in apple season and coast through the holidays.
- Marlborough pie is pumpkin pie's more interesting cousin. Apple custard, nutmeg, lemon zest, and a deeply caramelized crust — if you love pumpkin pie you are going to love this, and most people have never heard of it.
- A double-dark crust is not a burnt crust. This pie wants a very caramelized edge — deeply golden, almost dark — and that color means all of the available sugars have caramelized into something toasty and complex. Don't pull it early.
- Holiday prep that actually works. A freezer stocked with fitted, docked pie shells means pie on any night of the week in about an hour. Do the work now, enjoy the holidays later.
The Only Pie Dough You Need In Your Freezer This Holiday Season
Chef Erin McNaught
Rated 5.0 stars by 1 users
Category
Dessert
Cuisine
American
Servings
3 Pie Shells + 1 Marlborough Pie
Prep Time
30 minutes
Cook Time
40 minutes
Calories
310
A cream cheese pie dough that freezes four different ways — raw, rolled flat, fitted in the pan, or par-baked — plus a traditional Marlborough apple custard pie that's been around since the 1800s and deserves to come back.
Ingredients
-
300g unsalted soft butter
-
1 Pound of Cream cheese
-
500g all-purpose flour
-
1 Tabelsppon of Kosher Salt
- 2–4 tablespoons sugar (optional — add if making a sweet crust)
-
Applesauce (homemade or store-bought — no need to make your own) (1 Cup)
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3 Eggs
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Sugar (¾ Cup)
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Nutmeg & Salt (1 pinch of each)
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Lemon Juice (2 Lemons)
-
Melted Butter (2 Tablespoons)
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Mil & Heavy Cream (½ Cup Each)
Cream Cheese Pie Dough:
Marlborough Apple Custard Pie Filling:
Directions
Before anything else, let's make a cartouche — a custom-cut parchment round that fits your pie pan perfectly. I do this every time I bake a pie and I strongly recommend it over buying pre-stamped rounds. Take a sheet of parchment and fold it in half corner to corner to make a triangle. Fold it in half again corner to corner — this is what I call the little hat shape. Fold it one more time to make a small triangle. Now hold the pointed tip of that triangle over the center of your pie pan. The distance from the center point to the edge of the pan is the radius of your circle. For a pie pan where you want a little coverage up the sides — which you do — cut slightly beyond that radius point. Open the parchment up and you have a perfectly fitted round. I keep a stack of these on hand at all times. They come in handy for things that don't always make sense until you need them.
In a stand mixer, combine the room temperature butter and cream cheese and mix until they are smooth and well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. This is also the moment to add any flavoring you want in the dough — dried spices, cinnamon, herbs. If you know this dough is going into something sweet, add 2 to 4 tablespoons of sugar now. Add the 500g of all-purpose flour and salt. Mix until the dough comes together but do not overwork it — you're looking for a sandy, slightly shaggy texture with visible fat pieces throughout. Those fat pieces are exactly right. Stop before the dough is fully smooth.
Turn the dough out onto a piece of parchment. It will look underdone and rough at this stage — that is correct. Use the parchment itself to help press and compact everything together. As you work it, the fat continues to hydrate the flour and everything starts to come together without extra handling. Overworking pie dough develops gluten and produces a tough, chewy crust. The less you touch it with your hands, the better your crust will be.
Divide the dough into approximately one-pound portions using a kitchen scale and a bench scraper. This batch will give you two to three portions depending on exact weights. Each one-pound portion is enough for one single pie crust. Work quickly — the dough is at room temperature right now which makes it easy to shape, but you want to get it into the freezer before it gets too soft and sticky to handle cleanly.
Option 1 — Raw Puck (most flexible)
Shape each portion into a flat puck between two pieces of parchment. Press it out with your hands into a rough round disc — don't worry about making it perfect. Double-wrap in parchment, making sure there are no gaps. The fat in this dough will absorb any smell in your freezer if it's not well wrapped, and freezer taste in pie dough is not something anyone wants. These keep for up to 90 days. When you're ready to use one, thaw it in the refrigerator overnight. To roll out, sandwich between two pieces of parchment, roll to your desired thickness, then refrigerate or freeze for 3 to 4 minutes until the parchment peels off cleanly without sticking.
Option 2 — Rolled Flat
Roll each dough portion out between two pieces of parchment to roughly the size and thickness you'll need for your pie. Stack them flat in the freezer like firewood — parchment between each layer keeps them from sticking together. This saves you the rolling step on baking day and works beautifully if you know you'll be making standard-sized pies. Thaw in the refrigerator, peel the parchment, and fit directly into your pan.
Option 3 — Fitted in the Pan
This takes a little more preparation but sets you up for the easiest possible baking day. Roll the dough out, fit it into your pie pan, trim and crimp the edges, dock the bottom thoroughly with a fork, and freeze the whole pan. Stack fitted shells in the freezer with parchment between them. Pull one out, fill it, and bake — no thawing required for most fillings.
Option 4 — Par-Baked Shell (most ready-to-go)
This is the most prepared you can possibly be. Fit the dough into your pan, dock it well, line it with your cartouche, and fill with pie weights, uncooked rice, or dried beans. Blind bake at 350°F until the crust has just started to set and the fat begins to cook out — you'll see the color begin to change and the crust start to firm up. You are not baking it all the way through. Pull it just before you think it's done. Let it cool completely, then freeze with parchment between shells. On baking day, pull a shell from the freezer, add your filling, and bake. You are now one step away from a finished pie at any moment.
Chill your rolled dough in the refrigerator just until it's firm enough to handle without sticking — a few minutes is usually enough. Use the parchment to flip and lower the dough into the pan rather than picking up the bare dough with your hands. The parchment gives you something to hold onto and keeps the dough from tearing mid-transfer. Once it's in the pan, let it relax for a moment — you'll see it begin to soften and drape on its own. Gently lift the edges and tuck the dough down into the corners of the pan without stretching it. This is where the cream cheese earns its place: a standard all-butter dough tears at this stage. This one tucks.
Trim any excess dough from the edges, saving the scraps for patches. If you have any small tears or thin spots — and you probably will, and that's fine — patch them by pressing a small piece of scrap dough over the gap. It will be underneath the filling and nobody will ever know. Starting at the thinnest point of the overhang, roll the edge under and press it against the rim of the pan, working your way around and turning the pan as you go. If there's significantly too much dough at any spot, trim it off rather than trying to roll an enormous amount of dough under — it won't sit flat and it will puff unevenly during baking.
Once the edge is rolled under evenly, use three fingers to crimp: one finger on the outside of the rim pushing in, two fingers on the inside pushing out and apart, creating a V-shaped pinch. Work your way around the entire rim. After crimping, gently press the edges down if they're standing too tall — you want them to hold their shape during baking without toppling over. Use a muddler, the corner of a measuring cup, or just your finger to press the dough firmly into the corners and seam of the pan. You want every part of the dough touching the actual metal — any air pockets underneath will puff and separate during baking.
If your filling is wet — and for the Marlborough pie it absolutely is — you need to dock the crust before baking. Use a fork and go all the way across the bottom of the shell in a thorough, even pattern. I go a little overboard with this and I am not sorry about it. Docking creates escape routes for the steam and heat that build up between the dough and the pan during baking. Without those vents, the steam has nowhere to go and the crust will puff, bubble, and potentially crack open. Line the docked shell with your cartouche, add your pie weights or rice, and blind bake at 350°F until the crust is just beginning to set. Remove the weights and cartouche. At this stage you can either freeze the shell as described above, or proceed directly to filling and baking.
Marlborough pie is a traditional English custard pie from the 1800s — think of it as pumpkin pie's more interesting, apple-forward cousin. The filling is simple: applesauce is your base. You can make your own if you have apples to use up, but store-bought applesauce works perfectly here and Erin uses homemade only because she happened to have extra from apple picking. Add your eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon zest to the blender along with the applesauce. Start on low and work up to high until the filling is completely smooth. This filling almost always yields exactly enough for one pie — not too much, not too little. Pour it into your prepared blind-baked shell.
Bake at 350°F for approximately 40 minutes. You are looking for a stiff jiggle — the center should move as one unit rather than sloshing. It will look slightly underdone when you pull it and that is intentional. The residual heat inside the custard will continue cooking it after it comes out of the oven. If you wait until it looks completely set in the oven you will overbake it.
A note on the crust color: this pie calls for what old recipes describe as a double-dark crust. That means deeply caramelized edges — darker than you are probably comfortable with if you're used to pulling pies at the first sign of golden brown. What looks almost burnt on a Marlborough pie is actually all of the available sugars in the cream cheese crust fully caramelizing, and it tastes toasty, rich, and complex rather than bitter. Trust the process and leave it in.
Let the finished pie cool completely to room temperature before refrigerating — up to four hours on the counter is perfectly safe. Custard pies are served cold. A little ice cream, a little whipped cream, or a spoonful of fresh apple alongside is all it needs.
Recipe Note
Recipe FAQ
Why add cream cheese to pie dough instead of using all butter?
Traditional pie dough is all butter, or sometimes a mix of butter and lard — both produce a flaky, flavorful crust but can be unforgiving to work with. Cold all-butter dough tears easily when you're fitting it into a pan, and any cracks or rips are difficult to patch cleanly. Replacing half the butter with cream cheese adds fat in a different form — the cream cheese's protein and moisture content make the dough more pliable and significantly more forgiving at the fitting stage. It tucks into the pan corners without ripping, patches seamlessly when needed, and in the oven the cream cheese's natural sugars caramelize into a richer, more complex crust than a standard butter crust produces. Once you've made it this way it's hard to go back.
Why does the dough need to be double-wrapped before going into the freezer?
Pie dough has a very high fat content, and fat is extremely good at absorbing odors. A single layer of parchment or plastic wrap leaves enough exposure for the dough to pick up whatever else is living in your freezer — and freezer taste in a pie crust is immediately noticeable in the finished pie. Double-wrapping in parchment creates a complete barrier that keeps the dough tasting clean and neutral for up to 90 days. Label each package with the date so you know exactly how long it's been in there.
What is a cartouche and why make one instead of buying pre-cut parchment rounds?
A cartouche is a custom-cut parchment round made to fit a specific pan. Pre-cut rounds are sized for standard cake pans and often don't fit pie pans correctly — they're either too small to cover the sides or too large and bunch up unevenly. A cartouche takes about 60 seconds to make and fits the exact pan you're using. The folding method creates a precisely sized round every time regardless of pan size. Once you know how to make them you'll cut your own for everything — pies, cakes, tarts, any round pan that needs lining.
What is blind baking and when do I need to do it?
Blind baking means baking the pie shell before the filling goes in. Any pie with a wet filling — custard, fruit, cream — needs a blind-baked crust because the moisture from the filling will prevent the bottom crust from ever fully cooking if it goes in raw. During blind baking, pie weights, uncooked rice, or dried beans are placed on top of parchment inside the shell to hold the sides up and prevent the bottom from puffing. The shell is baked until just set — not all the way through — and then the weights are removed. For the Marlborough pie, par-baking the crust before adding the custard filling is what gives you a crust that's fully cooked all the way through rather than raw and soggy on the bottom.
What is Marlborough pie and where does it come from?
Marlborough pie is a traditional English custard pie that dates to the 1800s, built on an applesauce base with eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon zest baked in a pie shell. It arrived in America through early colonial cooking and was a staple of New England baking for generations before falling out of common use. The flavor is most often compared to pumpkin pie — the custard texture is nearly identical — but the applesauce base gives it a lighter, fruitier character with a brightness from the lemon zest that pumpkin pie doesn't have. Traditional recipes specifically call for the crust to be baked double-dark, meaning deeply caramelized rather than the pale golden most modern recipes target. That caramelization is intentional and produces a toasty, rich crust that pairs beautifully with the delicate custard filling.
Can I make this Indoors?
We rate this a 5 out of 5 for cooking indoors. This is entirely a kitchen recipe from start to finish — a stand mixer, a rolling pin, a pie pan, and a standard oven are all you need. No outdoor equipment of any kind is involved at any step. This is as indoor as cooking gets.
Recipe Highlights & Insights
The four-stage freezer system in this recipe is worth understanding as a philosophy rather than just a set of instructions. Each stage represents a different trade-off between preparation time now and convenience later. A raw puck takes the least time to prepare but requires the most work on baking day. A par-baked shell takes the most preparation time but means a finished pie is almost no work at all when you need it. The right option depends entirely on how much time you have today versus how much time you'll have during the holidays. Making a batch of all four types at once covers every scenario.
Docking is one of those steps that home bakers sometimes skip because it feels overly cautious, and then regret skipping when their crust bubbles up and cracks during the blind bake. The science is straightforward: water in the dough turns to steam during baking and needs somewhere to escape. Without docking holes, that steam is trapped between the dough and the pan and forces its way out wherever it can find a weak point — usually in the middle of the bottom crust in the form of a large bubble or crack. Docking provides intentional escape routes that release steam evenly across the entire base rather than concentrating pressure in one spot.
Marlborough pie deserves to be better known than it is. It appeared in American cookbooks as early as the 1600s and was considered a New England Thanksgiving staple through the 19th century, gradually fading as pumpkin pie became standardized as the holiday dessert of choice. Food historians have noted that Marlborough pie's apple custard base was likely more common in early American kitchens than pumpkin pie because apples were far more widely cultivated and available. Reintroducing it alongside the familiar pumpkin pie at a holiday table gives guests something genuinely surprising.
The instruction to pull the Marlborough pie when it still looks slightly underdone is one of the most counterintuitive but important details in the recipe. Custard pies — this one, pumpkin pie, chess pie, any egg-and-dairy filling baked in a shell — continue cooking after they come out of the oven from the residual heat retained in the filling. A custard that looks perfectly set in the oven will be overcooked and cracked by the time it cools.
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Nutrition
Nutrition
- Nutrition Serving Size
- 1 Slice
- per serving
- Calories
- 310
- Carbs
- 48 grams
- Cholesterol
- 95 milligrams
- Fat
- 14 grams
- Saturated Fat
- 8 grams
- Sodium
- 180 milligrams
- Fiber
- 1 grams
- Sugar
- 28 grams
- Protein
- 5 grams
