Copycat Milk Bar Crack Pie — This recipe lives up to its name and everyone should try this pie at least once!! It’s a fairly involved recipe from Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook, but I promise the effort is worth it!
Table of Contents
Milk Bar Crack Pie Recipe
Yep, you read the title correctly. This is a Christina Tosi recipe, and I surmise this pie and the real thing have a fair amount in common.
The addictive quality, thinking about it when you shouldn’t be, and wondering when you’re going to get it again are likely common themes for both. I can say definitely that all rings true with regard to Crack Pie.
Like all of Christina’s recipes, there are multiple steps and recipes within recipes but the results were worth it.
There’s a reason that Momofuku Milk Bar sells these pies for $44 each.
They are a PITA to make, the cost of the raw ingredients per pie, even if you go el cheapo and buy store-brand multiple sticks of butter, sugar, nearly a dozen eggs, heavy cream, and milk powder there’s probably at least $15 dollars worth of just raw ingredients in it.
Not to mention few hours worth of time and lots of labor and dishes. I had every sheet pan, mixing bowl, spatula, and measuring cup I own dirtied up for this pie.
Would I make this again? Yes, definitely, and with the changes I noted in the tips section of this blog post. (Use the table of contents at the beginning of this post to click through to the tips section!)
All in all, this baby is sweet, creamy, and will make you moan and groan. It’s full of texture from the crunchy oat cookie, complemented with the buttery smooth filling.
Each bite is crack-like, indeed.
- If you are not a fan of sweet desserts, this is not for you.
- If you are not a fan of fatty, buttery, rich desserts, this is not for you.
- If you’re not a fan of either of those things, you’re reading the wrong blog anyway.
I can only imagine the Google search hits my site is going to get after this post.
Copycat Crack Pie Ingredients
To make this Milk Bar pie recipe, you’ll need:
- Unsalted butter
- Light brown sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Egg yolks
- All-purpose flour
- Old-fashioned oats
- Baking powder and baking soda
- Kosher salt
- Corn powder
- Milk powder
- Heavy cream
- Vanilla extract
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Crack Pie From Scratch
I’ve given very detailed instructions in the recipe card below on how to make this Milk Bar crack pie recipe. Below is just a brief overview of the process:
- Make the oat cookie crust. Make it like you would a normal cookie dough, spread it out onto a baking tray, then bake.
- Let the oat cookie cool completely, then pulse in a food processor with a little butter and salt.
- Press the oat cookie mixture into a pie plate.
- Make the pie filling. Whisk together the filling ingredients. Pour into the prepared pie shell.
- Bake the pie. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes, then open the oven door and reduce the baking temperature to 325F (leave the pie in the oven while you do this). When the oven temperature reads 325°, close the door and finish baking the pies for 5 minutes.
- Let the pie cool. Let the crack pie cool completely before slicing (otherwise it’ll be too runny and won’t slice well).
Tips for Adjusting the Original Crack Pie Recipe
As I’ve already mentioned, making Momofuku Crack Pie at home requires a lot of ingredients, recipe steps, and equipment. To make your life easier, here are my top tips for adjusting the recipe.
I would halve the entire recipe, not just the filling portion, right off the bat (no one needs two of these laying around, nor do you “need” the extra cookie portion; unless you have the freezer space for it or company or are training for a triathlon, halving is my recommendation)
I would use a 9-inch, not 10-inch, pie plate as she recommends. I felt it was just “barely” enough filling and don’t attribute it to halving the recipe. I also used more than half the cookie for the crust and feel a 9-inch would be better.
I would underbake the cookie crust by about 25-30% of what she recommends (take it from 15 minutes to about 10 minutes) so that it crumbles easier and packs into the pie plate easier; plus it gets baked a second time anyway as part of the pie.
I would consider buying a store-bought graham cracker pie crust and just making Christina’s filling if I wanted to take this recipe from 2 hours of standing on my feet to 15 minutes by just making the filling.
Tosi recommends baking the entire pie, crust and filling together, for 15 minutes at 350F, opening the oven door and allowing the oven to cool to 325F, and then baking for about 5 more minutes after the oven temperature has reached 325F (about 20-25 minutes of total baking time).
I needed to bake mine for about 31-34 minutes of total baking time in order for the center to set (at least one-third longer than she called for which is highly significant and to be noted). Also I was only baking one pie; if I had two in the oven, it would have taken even longer.
Recipe FAQs
Nope! Because I was halving the Momofuku crack pie recipe, this meant 1/8th cup or 2 tablespoons corn powder and rather than ordering or sourcing it at Whole Paycheck, I simply used 1 1/2 tablespoon King Arthur all-purpose flour and things turned out just fine.
This Momofuku crack pie should be stored in the fridge. It will last up to 5 days.
Yes, you can also wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it for up to 3 months. To thaw, set in the fridge overnight.
When I first made this recipe, the pie was called “Crack Pie.” Now, it’s been re-branded as “Milk Bar Pie.”
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Crack Pie
Ingredients
Pie
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 1 recipe Oat Cookie, recipe follows
- 1 tbsp. light brown sugar, packed
- ¼ tsp. kosher salt
- 1 recipe Crack Pie Filling, recipe follows
- confectioners’ sugar for dusting
Oat Cookie
- ½ c. unsalted butter, softened
- ⅓ c. light brown sugar, packed
- 3 tbsp. white sugar, granulated
- 1 large egg yolk
- ½ c. all-purpose flour
- 1 c. old-fashioned rolled oats
- ⅛ tsp. baking powder
- pinch baking soda
- ½ tsp. kosher salt
Crack Pie Filling
- 1 c. unsalted butter, melted
- 1 ½ c. white sugar, granulated
- ¾ c. light brown sugar, packed
- 1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
- ¼ c. corn powder, corn powder is defined as freeze-dried corn, ground to a fine powder
- ¼ c. milk powder
- ¾ c. heavy cream
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
- 8 large egg yolks
Instructions
Oat Cookie Crust:
- preheat the oven to 350°. In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes until fluffy and pale yellow in color.
- Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a spatula. On a lower speed, add the egg to incorporate.
- Increase the speed back up to a medium-high for 1 to 2 minutes until the sugar granules fully dissolve and the mixture is a pale white color.
- On a lower speed, add the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix 60-75 seconds until your dough comes together and all remnants of dry ingredients have incorporated. Your dough will still be a slightly fluffy, fatty mixture in comparison to your average cookie dough. Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a spatula.
- Pam spray and line a quarter sheet pan with parchment or a Silpat. Plop the oat cookie dough in the center of the pan and with a spatula, spread it out until it is 1/4″ thick. The dough won’t end up covering the entire pan, this is okay.
- Bake the oat cookie for 15 minutes. Cool completely before using in the crack pie recipe.
Pie Filling:
- Mix the dry ingredients for the filling using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment on low speed. Be sure to keep your mixer on low speed during the entire process of preparing the filling; if you try to mix on any higher than a low speed, you will incorporate too much air in the following steps and your pie will not be dense and gooey – the essence of the crack pie.
- Add the melted butter to the mixer and paddle until all the dry ingredients are moist.
- Add the heavy cream and vanilla and mix until the white from the cream has completely disappeared into the mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
- Add the egg yolks to the mixer, paddling them in to the mixture just to combine. Be careful not to aerate the mixture. Use the filling immediately.
Assemble the Pies:
- Preheat the oven to 350°. Put the oat cookie, brown sugar and salt in the food processor and pulse it on and off until the cookie is broken down into a wet sand. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can fake it till you make it and crumble the oat cookie diligently with your hands.)
- Transfer the cookie crumbs to a bowl and, with your hands, knead the butter and ground cookie mixture until the contents of the bowl are moist enough to knead into a ball. If it is not moist enough to do so, gently melt an additional 1-1 1/2 tablespoons of butter and knead it into the oat crust mixture.
- Divide the oat crust evenly over two 10-inch pie tins.
- Using your fingers and the palm of your hand, press the oat cookie crust firmly into both 10-inch pie shells. Make sure the bottom and the walls of the pie shells are evenly covered. Use the pie shells immediately or, wrapped well in plastic, store the pie shells at room temperature for up to 5 days or in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
- Place both pie shells on a sheet pan. Divide the crack pie filling evenly over both crusts (the filling should fill the crusts 3/4 way full) and bake at 350°F for 15 minutes. During this time, the crack pie will still be very jiggly, but should become golden brown on top.
- At 15 minutes, open the oven door and reduce the baking temperature to 325°F. Depending on your oven this will take 5-10 minutes – keep the pies in the oven during this process. When the oven temperature reads 325°F, close the door and finish baking the pies for 5 minutes.
- After 5 minutes, the pies should still be jiggly in the bull’s eye centers, but not in the outer center circle. If the pies are still too jiggly, leave them in the oven an additional 5 minutes.
- Gently remove the baked pies from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool at room temperature. You can speed up the cooling process by transferring the pies to the fridge or freezer if you’re in a hurry. Freeze your pie for as little as 3 hours or up to overnight to condense the filling for a dense final product – the signature of a perfectly executed Crack Pie.
- Just before serving, finish with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.
- Adapted from Momofuku Milk Bar
Notes
I would halve the entire recipe, not just the filling portion, right off the bat (no one needs two of these laying around, nor do you “need” the extra cookie portion; unless you have the freezer space for it or company or are training for a triathlon, halving is my recommendation) I would use a 9-inch, not 10-inch, pie plate as she recommends. I felt it was just “barely” enough filling and don’t attribute it to halving the recipe. I also used more than half the cookie for the crust and feel a 9-inch would be better. I would underbake the cookie crust by about 25-30% of what she recommends (take it from 15 minutes to about 10 minutes) so that it crumbles easier and packs into the pie plate easier; plus it gets baked a second time anyway as part of the pie. I would consider buying a store-bought graham cracker pie crust and just making Christina’s filling if I wanted to take this recipe from 2 hours of standing on my feet to 15 minutes by just making the filling. I didn’t miss the corn powder and would continue to use my 1 1/2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour because I am frugal, didn’t want to source it, and don’t want to store a bag of corn powder in my already maxed out cupboard space for the occasional one tablespoon use of it. Tosi recommends baking the entire pie, crust and filling together, for 15 minutes at 350F, opening the oven door and allowing the oven to cool to 325F, and then baking for about 5 more minutes after the oven temperature has reached 325F (about 20-25 minutes of total baking time). I needed to bake mine for about 31-34 minutes of total baking time in order for the center to set (at least one-third longer than she called for which is highly significant and to be noted). Also I was only baking one pie; if I had two in the oven, it would have taken even longer.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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You forgot to add the real whipped cream topping!
I will assume…milk powder is the same as Powdered milk???
Yes (I wrote the recipe as she wrote it in her cookbook, using her terminology/vocab).
Wow, ok, thanks for the feedback. I’ve been a lifelong baker and was pretty confident going in. Humble pie for me tonight, ha ha.
Humble pie is right, I know…and sorry it didn’t work. It can be a tricky pie to nail BUT when you do nail it, worth it :)
Oh, no! MAJOR disaster. I just took them out and there is a liquid layer of butter about half an inch thick on them. Completely ruined and disgusting. So disappointed. I know it can’t be the recipe since others have had so much success and I went back and double double checked every ingredient…all the ingredients are correct. The only thing I did different was that I forgot to put the butter in before the cream. I put it in right after and let it mix well. Looked fine when it went it but it wouldn’t set well even after a lot of time so I took them out and put a knife in the top of one and melted butter spurted out. Really, it was like a pond of butter. It all has to go in the garbage. Waaaa! Could it possibly have happened just by putting the ingredients in the bowl in the wrong order?
Sorry to say, yes, it could have. This is a VERY finnicky recipe and there are many people who can’t quite nail it, even if they think they did everything correctly. And in this situation you know you didn’t do everything correctly from the outset, and therefore, the way the fat is going to emulsify and work in with everything else just didn’t happen. Hence, the pooling results you had. Go buy the book and read her commentary about baking science and such and you will see why this ‘one little thing’ could and did cause the pie to fail. Sorry about your struggles!
Cant you just bake the crust in the pie plate and leave it at that. I don’t see making the cookie baking just to be destroyed and worked into another crust for the pie
I’m sure you can do whatever you’d like to make the pie your own. I simply made it exactly as written from the cookbook I linked and discussed.
I would say the 10″ pan is probably recommended d/t the extreme richness of the dessert, quite similar to Chess pie. 10″ is definitely what I would go with. Topped with unsweetened whipped cream, it’s better.
An interesting note- this seems to be simply a chess pie variant with a nontraditional crust. Because of this, I would recommend adding some lemon juice to the filling. Lemon chess pie is my go-to and I imagine this crust would take it to another level :)
Ok, I definitely know why it’s called Crack Pie, I bet it’s so addictive , no one gets any of it, since I’d sit and eat a whole pie myself, maybe baking two might be good for me!!!!!Ha ha, just kidding, or am I??? Now you did not use the corn powder, so how could I make w/o using the milk powder, as I am not vegan??? I have considered being vegetarian, but now am very anemic and Doctor told me to eat red meat, since I you get severe Anemia, they have Iron Infusions, but I am allergic to them, I have already had one, that’s how I know bout hat, don’t want to repeat that!!!!Any help would be appreciated, what was the corn powder for, since I am not familiar with. I will have to go to Whole Foods and ask around what things are, instead of just getting the usual stuff I go in there for!!!!Thanks, so many recipes, so little time!!!!
So I tried this. I compared this recipe with the one on her site ( https://milkbarstore.com/main/press/recipes-and-how-tos/#crackpie … which doesn’t specify things like type of flour… I assumed that meant AP, as normal, but on the description I see she actually writes “unbleached wheat flour” now, which I didn’t realize until this post…)
I don’t know. I used a tin that was 9 and 11/16 or something, and I only cooked one pie but I didn’t split the recipe, just in case. I weighed the batter and cookie so as to divide them completely evenly, and I don’t think I got enough filling. But still… I had to also cook mine much longer. And… yeah, I love sweet things, but this was really sweet… Which is kind of crazy.
Maybe the “unbleached wheat flour” would have made a difference? I don’t know, and I don’t quite know what that means. I did buy freeze dried corn (but it was fire roasted) from Whole Foods, and ground it in the processor, so… I followed the directions as much as I possibly could. I don’t think I deviated from anything. Mine is darker as well, and looks a little more gooey in the center; it doesn’t look evenly cooked. It’s also slightly thinner. Mine looks more like these:
https://blogs-images.forbes.com/jeneneronick/files/2011/11/crackpie.jpg
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xyjsJ4jdrMI/THmEU7AE-hI/AAAAAAAAAh0/-5nSHETknt0/s1600/1007_GF+Crack+Pie_21-2.jpg
So… and I did the oven-cooling process as directed, but when I opened the door, it was cooled enough (even too much) within like, a few seconds really. Maybe that had to do with the texture difference… maybe it cooled too quickly?
The photos from Yelp seem to show the real thing is more evenly cooked generally ( like this: https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/momofuku-milk-bar-new-york-4#gTEPHDvzscA3nv9jC0HaUA )
Someone did mention that it was too sweet for them. =\
I don’t know! I need to try the real thing I guess to compare? I can’t really believe the real thing would be too sweet for me; I must have messed up something in my recipe.
The pie is quite sweet. When I made this pie and posted this recipe years ago, that first link did not exist.
Unbleached wheat flour I really don’t think would make that much of a difference in this recipe compared to AP. I always back with King Arthur AP and that’s what I used here. I didn’t do the corn as noted.
I just made the pie, as she wrote it in her cookbook, baked it, and took photos of it. I’m sure the color of pies varies from oven to oven.
We made the oatmeal crust the final day of 2014 and the remaining pie today, 1/1/15. I agree with many of the comments above. Our final product doesn’t look at all like these pictures, and it tastes like a pecan pie without the pecans and there is no evidence of fluffiness. As far as being careful not to over mix, we followed those instructions very carefully. I’m really confused as to the contrast between your pictures of a light and fluffy looking pie and reality. A buttermilk pie with an oatmeal crust would have been easier and just as good.
I just made the pie, as Christina Tosi wrote it in her cookbook, baked it, and took photos of it. I’m sure the color and exact texture of pies varies from oven to oven.
I made this for Christmas, everyone loved it!
I only had normal bown sugar so I used that. It just meant that mine was a caramel colour. Also for anyone else in Australia, you could just use store brought ANZAC cookies for the crust. The giant cookie is just an ANZAC biscuit.
Will definitely make again!
Glad it came out great for you and great call on the Anzac cookie crust! I actually have a recipe for Anzac cookies on my site and I can see them working as the crust!
You don’t mention how long it keeps but another website said it can be made 2 days ahead. Do you think 3 days would be ok too? I’d like to make this for our Christmas dessert but need to make it ahead of time. Thanks!
I think 3 days is fine. It’s also the type of dessert that if you’ve never made it before, I encourage you to make it in advance anyway since it’s a more involved recipe and you just want to be extra sure you can nail it :)