Are you ready to make the most delicious Halloween Pie ever? Leave the chocolate or the Nutella in the pantry, this time the true stars of this Halloween dessert will be Grandma Licia’s homemade custard and Fabbri 1905 family cherries!
When I think of the scariest holiday of the year, a lot of ideas for my recipes come to mind, but only one has a face, a name, and a surname: Jack Skellington! Many of our childhoods are filled with songs, cartoons, protagonists, and antagonists that we loved and cannot forget. Jack is one of those for me. I adore the movie Nightmare Before Christmas for many reasons: from the melancholy to the joy of the wonder of Christmas that our Jack discovers and wants to bring into his world, albeit not very successfully.
I thought of him, the protagonist of this cartoon, for the second Halloween recipe this year! You’ve probably seen Jack Skellington’s face on pies many times, but always with hazelnut cream filling. And the cream? We cannot forget how good custard is, and if we add syruped cherries, then who can resist? Surely not me, and neither could my colleagues!
I’ve then developed a recipe different from the usual pies, here I am with the pie with buckwheat flour filled with custard and syruped cherries! An incredible combo, a fragrance, a texture different from the usual, and I will surprise you: a dessert that isn’t sweet! This was the comment of those who tried this Halloween cake!
If you follow the blog or my profiles, you know that I don’t like sweets or rather not those that are too sweet, full of sugar, creams, and too much cocoa. So, while thinking about this recipe, I remembered the buckwheat flour I had in the pantry and then, since this recipe had to impress, I thought of custard and cherries. So, not the classic and already seen Jack Skellington Pie for Halloween!
Below I will leave you the Halloween recipes I have presented over the years. You will find them all in the collection Halloween Recipes for Kids, divided by categories. The last published is the Sweet Halloween Coffin with Cocoa and Cinnamon, a soft and fragrant plumcake perfect for breakfast or snack. If you like puff pastry and want to amuse the little ones in preparation for the Day of the Living Dead, you can prepare with them the Sweet Halloween Treat or the Puff Pastry Bats!
Every link below is clickable and will lead you to the recipe you chose to read. Under the first photo, you will find the step-by-step video recipe to prepare the Halloween pie with me in my kitchen!
Every link below is clickable and will take you directly to the recipe you chose to read! Remember that I will be waiting for you every morning in the group and the Facebook fan page of Le Ricette di Bea with the Recipe of the Day! An unmissable appointment to start the day with a sweet or savory treat!
Let’s move on to making the Halloween Jack Skellington Pie with custard and cherries!
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very cheap
- Rest time: 30 Minutes
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 6People
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter, Halloween
- Energy 474.49 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 62.18 (g) of which sugars 23.06 (g)
- Proteins 10.10 (g)
- Fat 22.67 (g) of which saturated 13.78 (g)of which unsaturated 8.79 (g)
- Fibers 6.50 (g)
- Sodium 33.00 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 160 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for a Halloween Jack Skellington Pie with a 9-inch mold
- 1 1/4 cups buckwheat flour
- 1 1/4 cups flour
- 4 1/2 oz butter (softened at room temperature)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 egg (at room temperature)
- 1 1/16 cup whole milk (at room temperature)
- 1 egg (at room temperature)
- 1/4 cup flour
- 2 1/2 tbsp sugar
- to taste lemon zest
- 10 syruped cherries (from Fabbri 1905)
If you don’t like the hint of lemon in the custard, you can replace the zest with a vanilla vial or some vanilla extract. If you want a lighter custard with less chance of lumps, use cornstarch maintaining the same gram amount listed for regular flour.
Make sure all ingredients, where specified in the list, are at room temperature.
If you want to purchase the products of the Fabbri 1905 Family, you can take advantage of the 20% discount dedicated to my followers by entering the code FABBRIRICETTEDIBEA20 before making the payment.
Tools to prepare the Halloween pie
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Spoon
- 1 Scale
- 1 Plastic wrap
- 1 Refrigerator
- 1 Silicone rolling pin
- 2 Parchment paper
- 1 Pie mold
- 1 Knife
- 1 Oven
- 1 Small saucepan
- 1 Hand whisk
- 1 Stovetop
- 1 Spoon
- 1 Scale
- 1 Sieve
- 1 Grater
- 1 Small bowl
- 1 Plastic wrap
Grandma and Bea’s tip: if you decide to make this dessert, you should have already prepared the custard in advance. Like I did, in fact. I actually made my custard the night before recording the video recipe for Jack Skellington’s Pie you find above. This is because the custard must be completely cold so it doesn’t run or boil during the pie’s baking in the oven. Therefore, keep in mind this preparation time and relative cooling of the homemade custard!
Other timings to keep in mind: we will need to use butter softened at room temperature for at least 30 minutes, so it can be worked well by hand. The second timing to keep in mind is the pie’s resting time once baked. This custard-filled shortcrust pastry requires at least an hour of cooling before being served.
Bea’s tip for this recipe: allow the Jack Skellington Pie to cool to room temperature for at least an hour before storing it for another hour in the fridge. This way, we ensure that the custard is completely cold, well set, allowing us to cut pie slices without losing the filling because it’s too warm.
Steps for the Halloween Jack Skellington Pie Recipe with custard and cherries
Break the egg into the saucepan, add the sugar and work with the hand whisk. We need to incorporate air and make the mixture frothy. If you’re lazy or have hand pain, use an electric mixer: you’ll do it faster and with less effort. Then add the well-sifted flour and the grated zest of half a lemon. Place the saucepan on the stovetop and turn the heat to almost minimum.
Pour the room temperature whole milk slowly and mix gently with the hand whisk. The cream will start to thicken, taking about 5-6 minutes to become shiny and smooth. Turn off the stovetop while continuing to mix with the whisk. Cover with plastic wrap the bowl where we transferred it. Let it cool completely to room temperature before storing it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
Start the preparation by placing the room temperature softened butter in the bowl, pour the sugar and mix initially with a spoon. Then we will add the egg and a pinch of salt, continuing the mixing with hands. Pour the two sifted flours and start kneading until you get a compact shortcrust pastry. Wrap with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to rest for at least 30 minutes. If you have an hour at your disposal, it will be even better for the buckwheat shortcrust pastry.
After this time, we can proceed. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius in static mode, placing the rack in the middle of the oven. Take two parchment paper sheets and lay them on the work surface together with the rolling pin. Butter and flour the pie mold and take the shortcrust pastry from the refrigerator.
Divide the dough into two parts: more than half will be needed for the base and the remaining part will be used for the pie’s topping. Roll out the first part gently, placing the shortcrust pastry between the two parchment paper sheets so it doesn’t break. Then place the base in the mold. With your fingers, adjust the edges. Take the custard from the refrigerator and pour it over the shortcrust pastry base.
Take the syruped cherries from the jar and place them here and there on the custard. Then roll out the second part of shortcrust pastry, still using the parchment paper sheets and the rolling pin. Place it on the base and close the edges well.
With the tip of the knife, draw the eyes, nose and mouth of Jack Skellington, being careful not to pierce the shortcrust pastry, so don’t apply too much pressure. Bake the pie in the middle of the oven and let it cook for 30 to 35 minutes. It should become nicely golden.
Once removed from the oven, we will need to let the Jack Skellington Pie cool completely before serving it to our guests or our family. Keep in mind that the filling is custard, so compared to jam pies, the cream stays more liquid and requires more resting time before it can be sliced.
I kept the pie, once completely cold, in the refrigerator to be sure that the cream inside had stabilized. I recommend keeping it in the refrigerator if you will not serve it immediately, so it can have the perfect consistency to be portioned.
I did not use powdered sugar because otherwise the drawing would disappear, losing the surface decoration of this Halloween pie.
All that remains is to wish you a good appetite and remind you that I will be waiting for you every day here on my cooking blog with many easy, quick, and delicious recipes like this one!
As I admitted in the video recipe, I’m not good with drawings or cutouts, if your pies are prettier (and I’m sure they will be) than mine, send an email with the photo to lericettedibea@gmail.com or through the social media chats so that I can see them and share them with other followers!
Tips, variations, and storage:
Useful tips: as already indicated in the various steps and the preface of this recipe, there are many things to keep in mind before and during the preparation of the Halloween pie. All the ingredients listed in the list must be at room temperature. Respecting the resting times is essential, as is the preparation of the cream many hours in advance.
Recipe variations: if you don’t have, don’t like, or for any other reason, the buckwheat flour, you can replace it with an identical dose of regular flour. If you don’t want to fill the pie with custard, you can use a jam of your choice.
Storing the Jack Skellington Pie: as already mentioned, you can store the pie in the refrigerator for a couple of days, so it remains crisp and delicious and the cream doesn’t spoil, even if well-cooked.
