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I finally got mini pies into my repertoire! It took some experimenting, but I’m delighted with the result. Aren’t they adorable?   I’ve been making lots of bigger pies for years–the standard, round 9- and 10-inch ones, and even a few big rectangular “slab pies.” But all the while, I’ve been watching my fellow bakers churn out cute little individual pies. They’

They’re yummy, and they’re a modern-day classic: perfectly chewy bars in layers of graham cracker crumbs, coconut, chocolate and nuts. What do you call them? In my childhood, I knew them as Hello Dollys. Later, I heard them called by other names: seven-layer bars (when butterscotch chips were added) or magic bars. I wondered where my mom–a baker who always had something sweet ready for us–got

In honor of National Pie Day–and everyone who loves pie–I made a really big version of my Signature Tart Cherry Pie.  Making a “slab pie” is a great thing to do when you’re baking for a big crowd and one 9- or 10-inch pie just won’t be enough. Bringing one slab pie is like bringing two regular round pies; for each slab pie, you use double the dough and double the fil

Only a few days ago, I bid a farewell to my mother by baking a batch of her black-bottom cupcakes. It’s been three weeks since she died, and I know I’ve taken only the first baby steps in a very long journey to grasp what her passing means for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop reaching for the phone to ask her to explain some undecipherable detail of a hand-written re

I am baking for my mom tonight. Since she died two weeks ago, the days have been a surreal blur of plane flights, phone calls, family gatherings, tears, looking at old photos, more tears, murmured condolences, and sentimental storytelling. To manage the grief, I’ve been filling my hours with triaging the family finances, making arrangements with lawyers and funeral directors. But on this rainy ni

  I admit that I’m kind of obsessed with butter. I can’t figure out any other way to explain to you why I decided to spend a beautiful summer evening making it from scratch. No, it wasn’t a scene from Little House on the Prairie. It was more like Woman With A Bottle of Cream and Her KitchenAid. A totally different thing, really, from the laborious process described in mind-numbing detail i

Every once in a while, I have the good luck to come up with a recipe that makes people melt into little pools of helpless joy the minute they take a bite. This is one of those recipes. No pie has gotten more rave reviews at my office than CurvyMama’s Crème Brûlée pie. And since my office is full of reporters with wonderful vocabularies, I heard quite a bit of well-phrased rapture about this pie. The contrast of

I had a stroke of supreme good fortune the other day: I got to bake pies with former Washington Post food critic Phyllis Richman. She was gracious enough to show me the secret to her favorite lemon pie. It was such a lovely afternoon! We sipped green tea and told stories while we rolled pie dough and mixed filling. Thanks to Phyllis, I learned how to make a lemon pie that you will totally love.

Sometimes making too much pie can make a girl wistful; wistful for the days of chocolate chip cookies, sour cream chocolate Bundt cakes, plum crisps and blueberry cobblers. In these very quiet, relatively pie-free January weeks, I’ve been listening to that voice from the past and making more homey treats.

I couldn’t help it. I tried to come home from work and relax, do a few things around the house, curl up with a good book. But the zucchini was calling me, with its thin, whiny voice, from the refrigerator. Okay, I thought, I can resist that skinny-ass zucchini. It was when the avocado chimed in that I lost all hope. Okay, forget it! I give up!  I said, throwing down my book in disgust and dragging myself o