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I’ve told you before that I’m an almond skeptic. It’s true that I was won over by the little frangipane tart. But when it comes to marzipan, I’m worse than Sam I Am: I do not like it. Not in a train, on a plane, or anywhere.  But while I may not eat marzipan, making roses with it for cake decorations is really fun. Here’s how the best of them looked in pastry class last night: Yeah, it l

If, when you read that headline, you envisioned towering walls of silky buttercream, just waiting to tumble delightfully down on you, you are forgiven. Because if you fantasized lovingly about that for even one second, then you’re just like me. And that’s why I got seriously distracted when Chef Claude told us in pastry techniques class this week that we were going to build a buttercream dam. It didn̵

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: 

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

Be honest: if you had leftover homemade caramel in your fridge, what would you do? It’s been on my mind every day: it’s sitting there! In my fridge! Just staring at me! All plump and deep-amber colored! I can’t let another day go by! I have to do something! So I did the simplest possible thing: I lined a pastry crust with the caramel, and then piled chocolate cream filling on top of that. Like a pie

On the day before Thanksgiving, I should be posting apple or pecan pie recipes. But I’m not your normal gal. You’ve already got my pumpkin pie recipe, and I promise I will soon put up the apple and pecan. But this chocolate cream pie has captured my heart, and needs to be posted!

I really wanted to tell you about this pie yesterday, but I couldn’t, because I was making it as the surprise dessert in a birthday dinner for one of my inner posse, LegalPie. Since she subscribes to the blog, the post would have ended up in her inbox and wrecked the surprise. Now I’m free to blab about it all I want. So you can imagine what we’re talking about, here’s a slice from CurvyMama:

From New York City I haven’t completely lost my mind. But this did happen today: in Bubby’s underground kitchen, the two new pies I encountered today spoke to me. That’s because they were the two pies that my daughters would create with a magic wand if someone said, “Design the pie of your dreams.” (And we actually did this; that’s why Sweetie Pie Hannah and Sweetie Pie Sara are on