Cream pie

A cream pie, crème pie, or creme pie is a type of pie filled with a rich custard or pudding that is made from milk, cream, sugar, wheat flour, and eggs and typically topped with whipped cream.

Cream pies are usually what is used for pieing, or throwing a pie in someone's face.

Variations
Notable versions include the banana cream pie. Cream pies are made in many other flavors, including vanilla, lemon, lime, peanut butter, coconut, and chocolate.

Ingredients
Most cream pies have a custard filling and a whipped cream topping. The custard filling is related to crème patissière, a key component of French cakes, and tarts. It is a one-crust pie, where the crust covers the bottom and sides but not the top. The crust may be a standard pastry pie crust, or made with crumbled cookies or a graham cracker crust.

Most cream pies are made with a cooked custard filling. The "Magic Lemon Cream Pie", invented at Borden and attributed to their fictional spokesperson, Jane Ellison, is instead thickened by the room-temperature curdling of a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, eggs, and lemon juice. This later evolved into Key lime pie.

Pieing
Pieing, or throwing a pie -- usually a cream pie -- has its origins in the "pie in the face" gag from slapstick comedy. It appears on stage in the music hall sketches of the English theatre impresario Fred Karno. The practice is also used to express disapproval of politicians or other public figures and is sometimes done lightheartedly at charity events, where someone in a position of authority will volunteer to receive a pie in the face from the winning bidder.

Dishes with similar names

 * Boston cream pie is an American cake that in the past has been referred to locally as a chocolate cream pie
 * Sugar cream pie is an American custard pie