Pie Times at Shawnee Mission East

While I don’t discriminate between baked goods, I do have a few seasonal favorites: pumpkin bread, cinnamon rolls, but pie is usually at the top of that list. There’s nothing better than getting a slice of warm apple pie and sipping on some Louisburg apple cider.

My favorite pies usually have a flaky yet malleable crust— but it can’t be too chewy. The filling has to be just right — runny enough to fall off the crust, but not runny enough to make the crust soggy.

Without further ado, here’s a piece of my mind when it comes to Kansas City’s slice hotspots.

McDonald’s

Mcdonald’s apple fritter really took me by surprise and showed me that you don’t need to drop $6 on the same sized slice you would get from a cafe. In fact, I was able to grab a “pie and fry” for about $3.

The crust of the fritter was flaky and crisp. It wasn’t sweet either, which helped to balance out the sticky filling.

The filling was not as fresh or as apple-y as I would’ve liked, but that was to be expected for a fast food dessert. There were more notes of cinnamon than there were apple, which I didn’t like, considering it was branded as an “apple fritter.”

Ultimately, it was an easy on-the-go treat that I would spend my hard-earned $3 on again, hopefully next time with ice cream (if the machine actually ever worked).

You Say Tomato

I was instantly drawn to the precise, beautiful spiraled detailing of the cinnamon roll crust that You Say Tomato had on their blackberry peach pie. It ended up being just what the basic fruit pie needed to make it stand out.

Although I’ve had slices from here before, none have been as balanced as this one. The crust is not their usual lattice, and although it was slightly mushy, I was able to put it behind me because of how sweet the filling tasted.

The peaches and blackberries were somewhere in between fully cooked and fresh, which added that desired crunch that the chewy crust lacked. The tang of the blackberries bonded with the sweet peach bites, which add flavor complexity to the pie.

The cinnamon added spice — literally and figuratively — making it different from your average pie, but not overpowering the slice.

Heirloom

I love Heirloom and can’t get enough of their bread so I had very high standards for this pie going into it. They were definitely not met. Just by looking at the cracks in the filling and the sloppily spiraled whipped cream, I guessed it hadn’t been baked fresh that day (or even, by my predictions, the day before).

Hoping that “don’t judge a book by the cover” applied to this slice, I dug in, but not before I leered at it for a few minutes. The crust was very chewy and dense, but fell apart from the filling as soon as it left the plate. The more cooked part of the crust wasn’t flaky, just difficult to eat and felt like a dog treat, furthering my belief that this pie was definitely not “fresh.”

The filling also left more to be desired for a slice of pumpkin pie. The texture was solid, but it tasted like Heirloom skimped on the actual pumpkin and tried to compensate by using more-than-usual amounts of pumpkin pie spice. The cinnamon flavor overpowered the pumpkin, and tasted similar to how a fall candle smells.

Overall, I’ll go back to Heirloom, but it’s unlikely that I will be getting their pie anytime soon.

Getting Pie with Lucy Hoffman