How To Pretty Up Your Pie With Pie Crust Cutouts

If desserts held a beauty contest, humble pies would lose to glamorous cakes every time. But we say it's time to put a little polish on that pie and let it shine. Here are ideas for simple pie crust cutouts that add extra eye appeal to our favorite homespun dessert.

Related: See our entire collection of pie crust recipes.

You can use scraps of leftover homemade or ready-made refrigerated pie dough.

1. Roll out pie dough on a floured surface to 1/8-inch thick.
2. Dip your cookie cutter — or knife, pastry wheel, whatever you're using to cut out shapes — in flour. Then cut out shapes from the dough. Use a pastry wheel to cut out "diamonds." Or personalize a pie with mini alphabet cutters.
3. To add color to cutouts, mix together raw egg yolk and food coloring — and paint your shapes.
4. Use a paring knife to draw veins on leaf cutouts.
5. To "glue" the cutout shapes to the pie crust, dab the bottoms with water or egg wash.
6. If you like, brush the pie with egg wash and sprinkle some coarse sugar over the top so the crust shines!

Bonus Tip: Use cutout shapes to hide cracks on pumpkin pies.

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