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The croissants are in the oven, and I have a terrible feeling about them. They hardly rose during proofing, even though I painstakingly tried to recreate the conditions Chef Claude taught us last week. So now they’re baking, and I confess that a lovely smell is starting to emanate from the oven. But my little croissants are scrawny and underdeveloped, and I fear they are going to be hard as rocks. What did I do

It seemed like such a good idea: lining the crust of a banana cream pie with white chocolate. And it came from an impeccable source: Rose Levy Beranbaum, one of the most revered baking goddesses of all time. So I adapted the idea to my own banana cream pie for a dinner party, only to find, to my embarrassment, that the hostess and her guests were silently yearning for sledgehammers to cut through their pie crusts.

Of all the experimental pies I’ve lugged into the newsroom at my day job, this is the one my colleagues loved the most. It’s true, journalists tend to be easy to feed. Their standards are low. They think of themselves as beleaguered, and they munch their way through just about anything for comfort. (My kids saw it clearly early on. Any foods we didn’t like at our house got this immediate chorus: 

Now that my valentine’s tart is no longer a surprise, I can post a few pictures about making it. This was the end product:

My version of a valentine:

Flush with the New Year, I had proclaimed 2012 the Year of the Pie Fairy. I had declared that I would do pie-bys–a sort of kindness attack–by bringing pies unannounced to friends and other loved ones. I haven’t quite gotten to the “unannounced” part yet, but I’ve been busy making baked goods for my dear ones.

If you’ve been following CurvyMama for long, you might remember how I swooned over the sugar cream pie at Hoosier Mama Pie Company in Chicago. (If you didn’t catch that post, check here.) After two months of inexplicable delays, I am excited to report that I’ve made one of my own, using HMPC’s very own recipe. Hoosier Mama pastry chef and co-owner Paula Haney was lovely enough to share her rec

Ok, you pie-o-phobes, this is the pie for you. So easy! So quick! So impossible to screw up! And oh, the way it makes your kitchen smell! Here’s the brief version, then we’ll walk you through the step-by-step, with photos. You mix dark brown sugar, maple syrup, a little flour and a couple chunks of butter in a saucepan and warm it, stirring, til the butter melts. When it’s cooled a bit, you drizzle

Wow! This is one of easiest and most flamboyant pies you can make. And guess what? No pastry crust! That makes it great for crust-o-phobics, and also a nice little entry in the gluten-free category.

I don’t generally do cute, and I refuse to do cutesy. That’s why the charm of these little guys pretty much ambushed me. Just look at them. They offer just the nicest little bit of plump weight in your hand. The perfect thing to do with leftover pie dough and excess pumpkin pie filling!