Pie all day

Breakfast, dinner or dessert—there’s a pie for that! Don’t believe us? We’re having quiche for breakfast, chicken pot pie for dinner and lemon meringue pie for dessert. There are so many ways to enjoy pie, and there is no better day to enjoy it all day than January 23, Pie Day, an annual celebration we could never miss. 

Baking a pie, whether sweet or savoury, can be a fun way to put your baking skills to the test, with a delicious reward to enjoy as a result. 

Pie chart math: One slice equals never enough

We’ve rounded up some of our favourite pies and found how much some of the ingredients to make them cost on average, nationally, in November 2023.

A pie typically consists of a pastry dough exterior, complete with a filling of your choice. 

To make your pastry, here are some of the essentials. In November 2023, a 2.5-kilogram bag of wheat flour cost $5.46, while a 2-kilogram bag of white sugar cost $2.92. Finally, 454 grams of butter cost $5.91. 

A classic sweet pie is often filled with fruits, so let’s look at some of our favourite fruit fillings. 

We’ll start with an undeniable classic: apple pie. In November 2023, apples cost $5.00 per kilogram. Just don’t forget the cinnamon! 

For a yummy summer treat, we’re baking strawberry pie. A 454-gram box of strawberries cost $5.38 in November 2023. Berry delicious!

We love banana cream pie, the cream of the crop for banana lovers. Bananas cost $1.67 per kilogram in November 2023. 

And here are a couple of pies with a citrus twist: lemon meringue and key lime. Lemons cost $0.91 per unit and limes cost $0.85 per unit in November 2023.

Now that we’ve indulged in some of our favourite dessert pies, let’s bite into some savoury classics.

We’ll start with a holiday favourite from Quebec: the meat pie, also known as tourtière. A meat pie’s crust is filled with ground pork, spices and sometimes a binder. 

Tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean is a similarly named savoury dish, consisting of cubed meat (or game), potatoes and onions, with a pie crust. The filling for this one is simmered for almost five hours in a Dutch oven. 

For a meat pie or tourtière, pork shoulder for the filling cost $7.43 per kilogram in November 2023, while potatoes cost $4.97 per kilogram and onions cost $5.24 per kilogram. 

Speaking of onions, onion pie was traditionally popular in Northern England, but has been enjoyed as a side dish in many Canadian households. 

Next up, we have the chicken pot pie. This one is often baked with a top crust only and filled with pieces of chicken and a variety of vegetables in a creamy sauce. Chicken breasts cost $14.10 per kilogram and a 750-gram bag of frozen mixed vegetables cost $3.92 in November 2023. 

Last but not least, we could not forget our breakfast pie—the quiche. A quiche has an egg-based, savoury filling within a pastry crust. A dozen eggs cost $4.65 in November 2023. Add in some bacon or veggies, and you’ll be eating pie for breakfast before you know it (and maybe even for lunch, dinner and dessert)!

Hungry for a slice yet? Time to turn on the oven and get baking! Any way you fill it, any way you slice it, it’s a beautiful day to eat some pie.

Explore the complete list of Monthly average retail prices for selected products for more pie filling inspiration. 

Check out the newly launched Food Price Data Hub for all the latest news on food prices in Canada.