The pie maker earns its bench space in the first cold week of winter, turning leftovers into dinner while the oven's still preheating. Sunbeam's four-cup unit has anchored this page since the old Pie Magic era, and owners still rate the current version highly.
1. Best Overall: Sunbeam Pie Maker 4-Cup PM4800
The PM4800 is the Pie Magic lineage in its current form: four deep cups, a pastry cutter in the box, and 575 owners averaging 4.7 stars. Eight minutes turns leftover stew into dinner, and that story repeats through hundreds of its reviews.
At around $100 it's the family unit. The non-stick cups are the consumable part, and the metal-utensil scratches that kill them are the one repeated sin in its reviews.
What We Like:
- Four deep cups
- Pastry cutter included
- Eight-minute pies
What We Don't Like:
- Cups scratch if mistreated
2. Best Alternative: Breville the Quick and Easy
Breville's four-cup unit matches the Sunbeam's 4.7 average across a smaller base of 71 reviews, with slightly shallower cups that crisp the base a touch harder. Same price territory, same pastry-cutter inclusion.
Between the two it's a coin flip settled by whichever is on sale, which owners of both say without prompting.
What We Like:
- Crisp bases
- Cutter included
- Compact footprint
What We Don't Like:
- Shallower fill
Other pie makers worth a look
- The Kmart $29 unit — the cult budget four-cup with no online purchase path from here, beloved in budget-cooking groups for doing the same job with a thinner build.
- Two-cup minis — for singles and caravans, both brands above sell two-cup versions that halve the bench footprint.
The pastry rules owners swear by
Frozen shortcrust for bases, puff for lids. The consensus across thousands of reviews and every pie-maker cookbook: shortcrust holds the fill without going soggy, puff on top does the golden dome. All-puff pies leak; all-shortcrust ones eat like biscuits.
Thaw to bendy, not floppy. Sheets straight from the freezer crack; fully-thawed ones tear. The ten-minute bench thaw is the window.
Cold filling, always. Hot stew steams the base pastry into paste before the element can set it. Fridge-cold leftovers are the entire secret to a crisp base.
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FAQs
What else do people cook in a pie maker?
Per thousands of owner reviews: quiches, frittatas, hash-brown nests, jam tarts, and a persistent community making perfect poached-style eggs in buttered cups. The deep-cup Sunbeam suits the experiments best.
Why do my pie bases come out pale?
Overfilled cups and hot filling, usually together. Less filling, cold, with the lid pressed properly, browns the base in the standard eight to ten minutes.
