This Thanksgiving Eve, Throw a Pie and Cocktails Party

Maybe you’ve been there: You loaded your plate with Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing, sweet potatoes and green beans, cranberry sauce and, okay, just a little more stuffing. You’re well aware that Thanksgiving dessert really is the best dessert of the year, but you find yourself piling more food on your plate. And by pie time, you’ve gone too far. Pie doesn’t even sound good anymore.

This nightmare scenario is the inspiration behind the Thanksgiving Eve Pie Party. While we love the bird, the squash, and the mashed potatoes, too, we want to give pie the attention it deserves. And the best way to actually enjoy your Thanksgiving pie is to eat one before it’s actually Thanksgiving.

Let me set the scene: You’re prepping for the big day. You’ve got a checklist and a schedule and maybe a spreadsheet. You’ve made your stock. You’ve dried your bread for stuffing. And now, you’re making pie. Your phone buzzes on the counter: So-and-so’s in town, with their new wife, and you haven’t seen so-and-so in ages. Come on by, so-and-so! you text. There’s pie!

And because you are brilliant and knew there’d be a few unannounced guests, you’ve baked more than you actually need for Thanksgiving. You’ve got an extra pie in the oven. And it smells amazing.

Call it the sacrificial pie: The pie you cut into when those friends arrive at your door, when your cousins stop by for hugs and a catchup before the next day’s holiday madness. The sacrificial pie is the one you truly get to savor, because it’s just a no-big-deal pie, not a whole holiday hootenany pie.

Because The Official (™?) Thanksgiving Eve Pie Party isn’t exactly a longstanding tradition, you don’t have to feel bound by any particular pie customs. You can make a pie from Grandma’s recipe cards, but it’s also a great opportunity to go out on a limb (and you all know we’re really eager to bring some new energy into Thanksgiving this year). We’ll be making Emeritus Food Editor Rhoda Boone’s extraordinary Black Bottom Hazelnut Pie, which blows any old-school pecan number out of the water. The gooey filling’s sweetness is tempered with a touch of espresso. The toasted nuts are filberts instead of pecans. And hiding in the deep is a layer of bittersweet chocolate. It’s a pie that deserves your whole attention. And your whole appetite.

Black-Bottom Hazelnut Pie

In my house, the night before Thanksgiving is usually a pizza-for-dinner kind of evening, or maybe a time to reheat brisket from the freezer, but there are always friends who want to join and hang out for a bit. And those friends like to drink. So our pie party comes with two different Thanksgiving cocktails that you can make in advance and have ready to pour for whoever stops by.

Think of the first, the Scotchy Boulevardier, as a wintry cousin to the Negroni, mixed with an ample pour of peppery rye whiskey and peaty Scotch. The second, Everything Good, is named for a popular Oaxacan saying: “Para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien también” (“For everything bad, mezcal, and for everything good, the same.”) Created by bartender Gillian Fitzgerald of Casements in San Francisco, it’s a bit like a smoky, boozy version of those foil-wrapped chocolate oranges that start showing up around the holidays. It makes the pie taste better, and the pie works its magic on the cocktail, también.

To make things easy, both make-ahead drinks get batched with water in a quart-size jar. This dilution is essential to make sure you’ve got cocktails that aren’t too sweet or too strong. To serve, you’ll just pull the drinks from the freezer and pour into ice-filled glasses. Then get back to your pie making and list-checking. Because this year the pie doesn’t signal the end of Thanksgiving. In fact, it’s just the beginning.

Scotchy Boulevardiers for a Crowd

Everything Good Cocktail

Originally Appeared on Epicurious