The
Pie Academy

Here’s how you make a graham cracker crust using peanuts, my crust of choice for a number of creamy pies, notably the Creamy Peanut Butter Cup Pie. There are several key steps to making a memorable crumb crust like this, starting with the consistency of the actual crumbs. In order to handle the crumbs with [...]

There are a lot of ways to make pie dough – here’s a good, basic one you’ll find yourself coming back to again and again. Like many of the pie pastries I make, this one uses a combination of solid vegetable shortening for flakiness, and butter for flavor. Combining them in roughly equally proportion seems [...]

If you’ve been following my articles and cookbooks for the past, oh, 30 years or so, you’ve probably heard me say about a bazillion times how easy and expeditious it is to make food processor pastry. It can also be downright dangerous if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing, as I clearly was not [...]