Satisfyingly Gooey Shoofly Pie Recipe

Pies are a big part of Pennsylvania Dutch Country culture: In the area around northeastern and south central parts of Pennsylvania as well as the Delaware Valley, which is where my family comes from, you'll find freshly baked pies at markets, farm stores, Amish gift shops, and makeshift stands along the side of the road. There are fruit pies, custard pies, cake pies, and milk pies. Walnut and snitz (dried apple) pies. Savory corn, parsley, and chicken pot pies. And lots and lots of whoopie pies, which aren't really pies at all. But nothing is quite as popular as shoofly pie which, as chef Betty Groff remarks in her 1990 Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook, has got to be the “best-known pie” from the region.

What Is Shoofly Pie?

Shoofly pie is essentially a molasses pie that’s topped with a cinnamon-spiced crumble. Part of the crumble sinks into the pie gradually as it bakes, creating a cake-like layer in the middle with a gooey molasses bottom. The remaining crumble becomes a crisp, powdery topping, and the result is a confection that delivers sticky, cakey, and crunchy layers in each bite. Though you’ll occasionally see shoofly pie on dessert menus, especially at Lancaster County’s famous smorgasbords, many Pennsylvanians consider it a breakfast pie. (Old cookbooks, including Edna Eby Heller’s 1966 The Dutch Cookbook, describe the pie as “good for dunking” in a cup of morning coffee.)

In his 2013 book As American As Shoofly Pie, historian William Woys Weaver notes that shoofly pie first appeared at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it was called Centennial Cake. The name “shoofly pie” appeared much later; though its quirky name is sometimes attributed to the act of "shooing" insects away from the sticky-sweet dish, it likely stems from the once-popular brand Shoofly Molasses Co., which in turn reportedly took its name from “Shoofly the Boxing Mule,” a circus act that toured Pennsylvania in the late 1800s. (Of course, there's a good chance that Shoofly the mule took his name from the act of shooing flies, taking the name full circle.)

There are numerous variations of shoofly pie. The 1969 Amish-Dutch Cookbook by Ruth Redcay features four shoofly pie recipes, each varying slightly in the amount of sugar, flour, and syrup to produce pies with different textures. Similarly, Heller’s The Dutch Cookbook includes three versions. “There is a shoo-fly pie to suit every taste,” Heller writes. “Dry, moist, and in-between.” Dry shoofly pies typically mix some of the flour topping into the molasses for a more cake-like consistency throughout, while the moist ones—which are commonly referred to as “wet-bottom” pies—have a satisfyingly gooey molasses layer on the bottom.

The recipe I’m sharing below is for my favorite variation: a wet-bottom shoofly pie, which has a thick layer of molasses nestled between the cake and crust after it’s baked, along with a crumbly topping for multiple layers that work beautifully together. Here’s how to make it.

5 Tips for Making Shoofly Pie

Rub shortening into the sugar and flour for the topping. The best way to prepare the crumble topping is exactly what it sounds like: rubbing flour and fat together until crumbly, just as you would for shortcake. This coats the flour with fat and limits gluten development for a delicate topping and a light, cake-like middle layer. You can use a pastry blender for this step, but I prefer to use my hands, which allows me to get a better feel for the size of the shortening and ensures the crumble has a breadcrumb-like consistency with no large chunks of fat remaining. (Small strands or pea-sized pieces are OK.) 

For the crumble ingredients, I'm a fan of the robust flavor of dark brown sugar, which contains more molasses than light brown sugar and gives the pie an even more molasses-forward flavor. You can, however, substitute with light brown sugar for a subtler tasting and lighter-colored pie. I use vegetable shortening to prepare the topping, as that is what most Pennsylvanians use, but cubes of cold, unsalted butter or lard will work just as well.

Chill the pie crust—and skip the blind bake. One of the most unfortunate things that can happen when making pie is a crust that shrinks as it bakes, leaving you with an unsightly, naked rim around the pie plate. In my recipe below, I call for chilling the crust for at least an hour, followed by a short freeze. This allows the gluten to relax and prevents the crust from contracting as the pie bakes. Freezing also guarantees that the dough remains cold when it comes in contact with the hot molasses filling, reducing the risk of the hot filling melting parts of the unbaked crust and creating a soggy bottom as the pie bakes.

To ensure the crust is crisp and properly cooked, many open-faced pie recipes instruct bakers to blind bake the crust before pouring in the filling. Traditional Pennsylvania Dutch "wet bottom" pies, however, typically do not include a blind baking step. Instead, cooks start baking the filled pie at about 400ºF or 204ºC, before lowering the temperature halfway through. This gives the crust a head start and guarantees it’s properly cooked, while the reduced temperature towards the end of baking helps to set the filling.

Use true molasses. Molasses comes in two varieties: true molasses and blackstrap. While blackstrap is bitter and salty, true molasses is smoky, bittersweet, and slightly acidic. I recommend making shoofly pie filling with true unsulphured molasses. (Sulphured molasses is typically made with green sugarcane; manufacturers often preserve the sugarcane by treating it with sulfur dioxide before the ingredient undergoes the sugar extraction process. Unsulphured molasses, on the other hand, is usually made with ripe sugarcane that’s ready for processing and is not treated with sulfur dioxide.)

Because I live in the UK, where molasses is not as readily available as it is in the US, I also tested with shoofly pie with dark corn syrup, which did not fare well. Because corn syrup is thinner than molasses, it isn’t able to withstand the weight of the crumble. The topping, as a result, sinks to the bottom too quickly, creating an overly cakey filling. 

Corn syrup also lacks the deep caramel notes of molasses, so the pie’s flavor was one dimensional and saccharine. With that in mind, I do not recommend using just corn syrup, but if you’d like a lighter, sweeter pie, you can replace some of the molasses with corn syrup in your filling. If you go that route, I recommend replacing 25% of the molasses (55 grams in my recipe below) with corn syrup. 

Another ingredient I experimented with is treacle syrup, which is slightly sweeter and thicker than molasses. Though the two syrups aren’t identical, treacle is often used in the UK to achieve a similarly sweet and smoky flavor in recipes like gingerbread or gingersnap cookies. My treacle test produced a deliciously rich, dark, and bittersweet pie that was similar enough to molasses to make it a good substitution if you have access to it and want to play with the recipe.

Bake the pie on a rimmed baking sheet. Unless you want to spend an afternoon scrubbing sticky molasses off the floor of your oven, I strongly recommend you bake your pie on a rimmed baking sheet. (Don't ask me how I know.)  A baking sheet allows you to transfer the unbaked pie from the kitchen counter to the oven with minimal sloshing. But more importantly, it will protect your oven from the hot syrup that will bubble and ooze as the pie bakes.

Let the pie cool properly. Though its gingerbread scent is enticing, do your best to resist slicing hot shoofly pie. The filling sets as the pie cools, so it’s crucial to wait until it reaches room temperature. (It's OK if the bottom still feels slightly warm, but no more than that, or you'll find yourself dealing with a liquidy mess.) It's a true test of willpower, but well worth the wait.