By 
Welcome to The Cheater’s Guide to Thanksgiving. While there are plenty of tips out there for folks making scratch desserts and artisan loaves, the Cheater’s Guide focuses on the person who could use a helping hand—even from some unconventional sources. Some might call it “cheating” (like that’s a bad thing), but there’s nothing wrong with using modern technology and supermarket know-how to help you make a bangin’ traditional feast—with much less of the traditional work.
Perhaps you don’t have the time or patience to cook five desserts for Thanksgiving. Maybe you despise baking. There’s a chance you’ve even got judgmental aunts and uncles looking for the opportunity to throw shade at your pastry skills again. Reserve the right to fudge the rules. Buy your desserts, and fake your way to success.
Keep in mind, while the methods I supply here are good enough to fool your family, they’re not only for the clever cheaters among us. There’s no shame in purchased desserts, but consider them unfinished. The store or bakery has done the hard part for you, you just have to add that final touch to make it your own. It doesn’t have to be complex to be effective—a simple dusting of powdered sugar, a drizzle of icing, or a flourish of chopped nuts—can make a massive difference. You dress up for special occasions—your dessert should too.
Where to buy holiday desserts
There are a lot of delicious options out there, but possibly more awful ones to avoid. While you can always do something unconventional, when it comes to traditional Thanksgiving desserts, you’re mostly looking at pies, pastries, cakes, and cheesecakes. Since you’re not baking them yourself at home, your buying options are to hit up the grocery store or solicit your local bakery.
Buying from a local bakery will likely look far more convincingly homemade. However, the trade off is price. For whole cakes, pies, and cheesecakes, independent bakeries will charge you way more ($30 to $70 a pop) than a grocery store. That said, sometimes it’s worth it. (More on this later.)
Buying from a big box grocery store like Whole Foods or ShopRite will be significantly more affordable but require a bit more flair to make the final product stage-ready. But that’s why we have tricks. You can save money and still have a lovely fake-n-bake dessert spread. The dessert is finished for the most part—all you need to do is revive it and put some handmade touches on it. That will usually come in the form of toppings, garnishes, or subtle manipulation tactics.
Dressing up store-bought cheesecakes
I highly recommend buying a cheesecake to cheat your way through Thanksgiving dessert. Not only is it the biggest pain in the ass to make, it’s the easiest to make look homemade because even industrial ones are simple. Baking your own cheesecake requires long baking and cooling times, maybe a water bath, and careful unmolding. That’s a lot of time where you could be peeping the football game or locating the Advil.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
How to do it
Buy a cheesecake from your grocery store or the local bakery. I suggest getting a single flavor cheesecake, like chocolate, pumpkin, or a plain, New York Style cheesecake with a graham cracker crust. If you do plan on fibbing to your guests, don’t be cute and get a peanut butter-caramel-crumb swirl version that you would never try to make.
In the store, they sometimes keep cheesecakes in the freezer aisle or in the lowboy section of the refrigerated sandwiches and to-go desserts. Grab garnishes, like graham cracker crumbs, fresh fruit, cherry pie filling, or heavy cream and dark chocolate chips to make ganache topping at home.
You can double wrap a cheesecake in plastic and freeze it weeks ahead of time, but the day before, thaw it in the fridge. To dress it up and add extra flavor, you have a few choices. Add a crumb to the side, add a topping, or add both. For the sides, carefully scoop graham cracker crumbs into the palm of your dominant hand. Hold the cheesecake in the palm of your other hand over a big bowl (to hold and catch the falling crumbs). Press the crumbs up the sides of the thawed cheesecake. You shouldn’t have to press too hard, it’ll be moist.
If you want something more dramatic than crumbs, try a topping. You could spoon softly whipped cream in the center or pipe rosettes around the edges. Make a simple ganache and spread it over the top of the cheesecake so it drips attractively down the sides. Spread some cherry pie filling on it, or heap fresh berries on top for a tart twist.
Taking store-bought pastries to the next level
Pastries are fabulous for Thanksgiving dessert because they look lovely, and many of them reheat splendidly. Anything that looks like it was made with puff pastry, and doesn’t have any icing on it already, can be re-toasted in your oven. This will improve the flavor, and revive the pastry. After that, work your garnish magic.
My local ShopRite had an apple strip that looked nice. The pastry was baked but not too browned, and only had a sprinkle of sugar as a finish. Not a problem.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
How to do it
Before Thanksgiving dinner is in full swing, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Unpackage the pastry and put it on the baking sheet. Bake it at 350°F for eight to 10 minutes. Poke the crust. If it’s floppy or anything but crisp, broil it for one or two minutes. Do not take your eyes off of it. Broiling will crisp the outside of the pastry, but it’ll burn it quickly so set a timer and be vigilant.
Cool the pastry and make another simple icing from a half-cup of powdered sugar and a scant tablespoon or so of water. Drizzle the pastry with icing and top it with a scatter of toasted chopped almonds, pecans, or walnuts. The pastry was lightyears better after this treatment. I might do it for non-holidays too.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Giving store-bought cakes a homemade flair
Personally, I would like us all to move toward cake as a Thanksgiving dessert food. It stays in peak condition for much longer than pie, it’s often easier to make, and there is a wide variety of flavors to choose from. Cake is also easy to fake because it’s easy to dress up with your personal touches. Allow me to explain.
How to do it
Buy the store’s bakery brand of cake. I advise against Entenmann’s or any other brand that is too recognizable. Go for a bundt cake (not angel food, that’s a dead giveaway), loaf cake, apple cake, or anything with streusel.
Grab powdered sugar, caramel sauce or chocolate drizzle, and nuts, like pecans, walnuts, or almonds. Take the cake out of whatever container it’s in and put it on a serving plate. For a loaf cake, you can either drizzle it with caramel, chocolate sauce, or make a quick white icing.
For crumb or streusel topped cakes, toast a big handful of nuts in a frying pan until fragrant. Chop the nuts. Mix half of the nuts with some caramel sauce until you have a loose, nutty mixture. Put the cake on a serving dish. Dollop the nutty caramel around the top of the cake so it oozes down the side slightly. Scatter the rest of the nuts over the cake. Top with powdered sugar.
For cakes with frosting, use the cheesecake trick to decorate the sides, but instead of using graham cracker crumbs, use another decoration. Use finely chopped nuts, sprinkles, or mini chocolate chips, and press them up the sides of the cake. Use the same garnish and scatter it decoratively along the outer edge too.
For any cake that still looks too manufactured, you can always opt to serve it as slices. Slice the cake and line up the wedges or rectangles in a decorative fashion on a long platter. Not only does this make it easier for guests to grab, but it interrupts any decorations that look too perfect.
Beautifying store-bought pies
Pies are pretty tough to fake, actually. Grocery stores sell frozen, pre-made pies that you can bake fresh at home. The problem is the tin. If you’re trying to hide the fact that you bought it, that aluminum pie pan is rather forthcoming about where it came from: not your oven. You’d probably use a glass or metal pie plate if you had made it from scratch.
Sure, you could pop a frozen pie out of its aluminum dish and swap it with a glass dish before baking, however the size is just off. Trust me, I tried. Frozen store pies are just small enough where the crust won’t hook over a regular nine-inch pie plate. If you try to bake it in there anyway, the crust will wilt in the oven and get all screwed up without proper support. Pie is just one of those things you’re better off making from scratch (along with these other things), or paying someone else to make it from scratch, like a small business bakery.
However, unfilled pie crust is another thing, and you can actually cheat that with the frozen stuff. Here’s a detailed look at how to do it.
How to make store-bought pies pretty
Even if you can’t lie about your pie, you can still beautify it. If you’re buying pies from the big box grocery store like Whole Foods or ShopRite, ask the bakery if they make them from scratch in-house, or if they come frozen. If they come frozen, you might be able to buy it frozen so you can bake it fresh at home. Otherwise, go to the freezer aisle and grab a pie you like.
The day you’re ready to cook the pie, take it out of the freezer. If it’s a double crusted pie, egg wash the top, and give it a heavy sprinkle of sugar (sanding sugar looks even more lovely) before you bake it. Bake it according to the package directions. The egg wash will become a glossy dark brown, and the sugar adds sweetness, textural crunch, and maybe even a touch of sparkle when the light hits it right.
When it comes to presenting store bought desserts for Thanksgiving, these finishing touches take them from packaged to personalized. Don’t be afraid to mix and match garnishes, and embrace imperfections.