Flash back to childhood: a luscious fat slice of banana cream pie and a fork. Mmm. Okay, so that wasn’t your childhood? Well, it wasn’t mine, either. My mom always kept our house stocked with homemade cookies, cakes or bars. But she didn’t touch pies. Do you have a similar story to tell? Do you need to fill that void with comforting, homemade pie every month? Join CurvyMama’s Pie-of-the-Month club! Perhaps you were one of the lucky ones whose home kitchen window sill was
With a pair of parentheses and one little letter “e,” the pie lovers stole something from the mathematicians: Pi Day. And so it was that CurvyMama–and many other pie makers and pie lovers across the country–celebrated National Pi(e) Day on March 14. We were lucky enough to be invited to a unique celebration that combined the Power of Pie with raising money for a good local cause.
What better way to commemorate the day before National Pi(e) Day than to engage in the art of the pie-by? That’s what I figured when I baked a cherry pie last night for Candi Kaplan, my friend and financial planner. I boxed it up and dropped it off at her office this morning, before she got there. And here is what she looked like when her assistant, Katie, presented it to her: Isn’t that lovely? This sort of happy face is just what we are after when we deliver pies, without warning,
“I don’t like chocolate. I don’t even like pie. And I can’t stop eating this.” That’s the kind of reaction I’m getting when I serve the newest addition to CurvyMama Pies’ menu: French silk pie. It’s the creamiest, smoothest, most chocolatey thing ever. And it’s winning over even the most stalwart dessert-haters.
Yes, I bake things other than pie. Do I sound defensive? Sorry. This could be hard to wrap your head around, but I have spent far more of my life baking non-pie things than pies. Cookies, bars and cakes are my heritage, my cherished memories, my soft blanket on a chilly evening.
CurvyMama couldn’t very well hold her head up proudly as a pie baker if she didn’t bake anything for National Pie Day. Luckily, there was no chance of this happening, since this most delicious of holidays coincided with the delivery of pies to my beloved Pie-of-the-Month-Club members. The selection this month is Aztec Chocolate Chess, my bewitching blend of fudgy, brownie-like filling with notes of cinnamon and chipotle (you read about it last year when I came up with this recipe). S
This is a different kind of Christmas story. It’s the kind where the oddball Jewish girl from New York makes a very-British pie for a renegade American friend to take to Christmas dinner. It’s the kind where the Jewish girl, who bakes pies under the name CurvyMama, has to figure out where the hell to get the most British ingredient of all for this very-British pie. And where CurvyMama finds out how wonderfully a funny little thing like suet can transform a bunch of nuts and fruits in
CurvyMama comes bearing tidings of great joy! We have officially entered the Wedding Pie business! The invitation to step into wedding-pie territory comes from across the country, where my dear old friend Joline is celebrating the soon-to-be wedding of her son-in-law’s mother, Barbara Vining, and her longtime partner, Niis Bue. After 18 years together, the two women were among the first in line to get their marriage license last week when that became legal in their home state of Was
What’s a CurvyMama to do after an intense week of Thanksgiving pie prep and baking? I thought I needed a break. But a holiday trip to California only made me miss my dough and my rolling pin that much more. So the minute I got back, I jumped right back into the pie kitchen. This time it was an experiment to find out what effect a new ingredient could have on my pumpkin-pie filling. And what better way to do that–and to endear me to my colleagues–than to bring two nearly identic
From Los Angeles Call us crazy, but we had to take a pie adventure the day after Thanksgiving. After all, here was CurvyMama, in Los Angeles for the holiday, and the legendary Apple Pan was just a 15-minute drive away. As a former Angeleno, I was well aware of the little shop’s hamburger fame. But until I read fellow piemaker Beth Howard’s memoir, I had no idea they were equally beloved for their cream pies. So, even though I was still full from the previous day’s Thanksgiving