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It was an ambush. There I was, walking innocently through my neighborhood market, when these folksy little boxes of miniature plums winked at me. They were tiny and round; some were deep red and some were a mellow yellow. They had been brought in that morning from a local farm. I couldn’t say no. Clearly, there would have to be pie within a few hours. I hurried home with the new objects of my affection, wa

Pie can bring you back from hell like nothing else. I have this little baby to thank for retrieving me. For those of you who napped through the national news recently, we here in D.C. spent the better part of a week in a slow, dark steam. It was hot and humid anyway–typical D.C. summer weather–but then a crazy storm hit us and left a million of us without power. As a major heat wave crested, we panted wit

“I want you to be pie makers, not recipe followers.” That’s how Kate McDermott opened the first of two Washington, D.C., pie making workshops today. As you probably already know from reading in this space, Kate agreed to leave behind her scenic little pie cottage on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula to give two workshops here in my kitchen. She’s blogging about them in her Art of the

I’m lucky to have Kate McDermott, piemaker extraordinaire and mistress of the Art of Pie blog, as my guest in Washington D.C., this weekend. She’s giving two workshops in my kitchen to a handful of lucky bakers. But yesterday, as we got ready for all the action to begin, I got a great fringe benefit: a one-on-one tutorial from Kate in gluten-free piemaking.

Okay, I used the old journalism trick of hijacking you with the headline. I confess that it was a bit misleading. The contest wasn’t really about the lemon pie filling; It was about the crust. And I wasn’t sure you would click on a post about a pie crust smackdown. But hey, before you abandon me in annoyance, let me tell you that the filling was also really great. And I’m going to give you the recip

My version of a valentine:

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.

It’s been an interesting 24 hours in my little corner of Pie Nation. Those of you who follow along with us here know that we set up a smackdown yesterday between two identical apple pies: one baked in a paper bag and one baked the typical way, in the open, hot oven air. If you’re thinking, “What the hell? Pie baked in a paper bag?” then you need a quick refresher, which you can get from readin

The idea of an apple pie baked in a paper bag comes to me from Barbara Mautino, the mother of one of my dearest and oldest friends, DesignerPie. From her kitchen in Los Angeles, Barbara started reading the CurvyMama blog and sharing recipes. I’ve heard of people making Thanksgiving turkeys in paper bags, but I’d never heard of baking pies in a bag until Barbara told me about it. Barbara found her recipe i

I’ve been in a post-Thanksgiving coma, breaking my promise to post the recipe for this pie. So here it is, without further ado: