Easy 10 Minute TARDIS Pie

Doctor Who’s Season Premier is mere days away, which can only mean one thing. While mainstream America is frothing over football, we’re all soaked up to our elbows in blue food coloring getting ready for watch parties!

If you’re afraid of the hot box in your kitchen yet your party host has banned you from bringing any more blue corn chips until they use up the 9 bags leftover from last season, DON’T PANIC. I have a super easy, 10-minute, no-bake TARDIS themed pie that requires zero kitchen skill to make and costs less than a couple bags of chips and salsa.

10 MINUTE TARDIS PIE

This recipe is super easy, incredibly forgiving, and doesn’t require one bit of chopping, heating, or any of the things that turn cooking-averse folks kitchen into a rehearsal arena for American Ninja Warrior. If you can boil water and hold a hand mixer without needing a trip to the hospital, you’re set.

Ingredients:

1 3-oz pkg blue raspberry jello1 cup boiling water
1 14 oz can evaporated milk (preferably chilled)
1.5 tbsp blue food coloring*
1 8-oz pkg cream cheese
1 cup sugar
2 pre-made graham cracker crusts

Optional:

White icing pen
Black icing pen
Yellow sprinkles

Ready? Let’s impress those naysaying friends who think you can’t cook. They don’t need to know that you basically just microwaved a cup of water before using a hand mixer and some vague threats to vent a week’s worth of frustrations.

Start off by boiling one whole cup of water. That’s it. You can use your microwave (I did) or a coffee pot or your mutant daughter’s heat vision – the real point here is you don’t need your oven. Just find a mechanism for making water dangerously hot.

Once you’ve excited those H2O molecules, dissolve your blue raspberry jello in their steamy depths.

You want to give the gelatin a couple minutes to thicken up. While you’re waiting, pour the evaporated milk into a bowl and viciously attack it with a hand mixer until it’s nice and frothy. All you’re doing here is adding air and volume so your pie will be lighter and creamier. Keep this up for about 3 minutes, then pour the slightly thickened jello and food coloring into the frothy milk and mix it a few seconds more.

I see you’re eyeballing the Jello-O color and thinking hey, that’s plenty blue. I don’t need to waste my precious 76 cents of food coloring. You’re wrong. If you don’t add any extra blue, your pie will come out the pale pastel shade of Bantha milk. Pour in the food coloring. Pour it all in. You’re already dealing with canned milk and boxed gelatin. It’s too late to pretend this is healthy.

Once your existential edible dye crisis is over, grab another bowl and beat the cream cheese and sugar together until fluffy. You don’t need to clean the beaters first. This isn’t fancy Frency baking chemistry. Just soften that block of dairy up by slamming sugar crystals into it at terrifying force.

Once your sugar-infused dairy is nice and fluffy, introduce the cream cheese mix to the milky blue jello. You can do this by hand, but hey, you dug out the mixer. Once you go to the trouble of finding both beaters, get as much use out of them as you can.

You’ll know these new acquaintances have become lifelong friends when they stop looking like a swirly vortex and merge into a TARDIS blue slurry the thickness of that can of paint you accidentally left lidless in your garage for a week.

Pour the thick blue goop into two of your grocery store’s cheapest pre-made graham cracker crusts and pop them in the fridge until they gel. This will probably take at least four hours. I recommend popping them in the fridge and forgetting about them overnight.

Once your pies solidify, if you’re the sort of person who is into cookie decorating, use those skills to draw a thick white circle around the edge, trace it with some black lines, and finish it with some lines down the width to make windows. Finish it off with a generous helping of yellow sprinkles in the middle.

If you’re not into decorating, don’t stress. Your friends will be perfectly happy with a clean and simple TARDIS blue pie.

Remember when I said this recipe is super forgiving?

Look – if you accidentally ate a tablespoon or two of the cream cheese, don’t worry. Your pie will be fine. If your Jell-O box says 2.75 oz instead of 3 oz (because they’ve been sneakily decreasing the quantity of powder in some flavors lately) don’t worry. If you’ve got a bit of pie filling left over, don’t try to over fill your crusts, just pour it into a bowl and enjoy eating your own little private mini-pie at home. It really is hard to mess this recipe up.

As a matter of fact, you can even make it up to a month in advance and freeze the undecorated pies. Just make sure the top is covered (most store bought graham cracker crusts come with a free lid. Turn the plastic part that holds the crust down over and it’ll fit snugly under the rim.) Since this recipe makes two pies, you can bring one to this week’s watch party, and if folks like it, bring the second one another week. They don’t need to know you didn’t do any new work.

If you do freeze it, you don’t even have to worry about thawing. This is equally good served cheesecake-style (refrigerated) or icebox-pie style (frozen.)

Your TARDIS Pie is cheaper than fish fingers, easier than custard, and guaranteed to make everyone you know think you spent a day in the kitchen instead of ducking in half assed during two commercial breaks.