Okay, so I get that Cinco de Mayo was a couple of weeks ago now…

And, yes! - the day  we celebrate Mexican heritage and pride certainly would have been the perfect occasion to trot out this recipe and serve alongside your frosty Coronas and guacamole.

But it’s not too late. The Preakness – the second jewel in the Triple Crown – is this weekend. Memorial Day weekend is next. And unless you’re already dead, you’ve probably been invited to somebody’s graduation. In other words, there’s a party in there, somewhere – and every party is better when these Barbecue Chicken Empanadas show up.

Empanadas are stuffed pastries, typically savory, found throughout Latin America. They can be large or small, and stuffed with everything from meats and fish to vegetables and legumes.

In this country, you normally find empanadas stuffed with ground beef , but this version uses chicken that’s been heated in a sort of enhanced barbecue sauce. A fair amount of seasoning is typical because you don’t want the flavor of the filling to get lost among the pastry.

Nor do you want to shortchange the amount of filling you can add, which is why I like to partially grind the chicken mixture in the food processor before I use it. Don’t go crazy with the processor, please. You just want to chop it up well, not turn it into chicken soup.

Try not to be greedy and overfill the empanadas; I still do that on occasion. It’s natural to want to make them good and plump, but it causes problems when you try to close and seal them. I  find that is sometimes easier to fold the dough over loosely, pick up the empanada and line up the edges, then press them together. Try it and see if that works for you.

If you have parchment paper, line your baking sheet with it. (I just ordered a fresh box of 1,000 sheets from Amazon.) Otherwise, just put them right on your baking sheet and brush lightly with the glaze. If it looks like I just poked the top of the empanadas with a fork, that’s because I did. The holes let off steam so they don’t puff up like a balloon, explode, and find you cleaning your often when guests arrive.

By the way, empanada dough is similar to pie dough, but it typically has less fat, more liquid, and an egg – all things that make the pastry a little more rugged and suitable for hand-held fare. Consider it a courtesy to your guests, who might be embarrassed if their empanadas self-destructed while they were giving you a hot stock tip or bragging about their kids.

As for serving, if they’re really small you can serve them whole. The ones we make here are just big enough to cut in half and serve up something like this, in a lined basket. But no matter how you slice ‘em, these are sure to please. Enjoy!

I know very little about horses and even less about the sport of horse racing, but that never stopped me and my wife Bev from attending what used to be one of the biggest steeplechase races in Maryland – the Marlborough Hunt Races held in Davidsonville, outside of Annapolis.

At least, they called it a horse race. Judging, however, from the festive atmosphere – not to mention the volume and potency of the libations served up by tailgaters stretched as far as the eye could see – it frequently seemed as if the horses were merely a respectable excuse to throw a big outdoor party after a long and dreary winter.

If you’ve never been to one of these things, tailgaters at horse events are no different than any other: their competitive spirit shines. Secret family recipes are trotted out and prepared in bulk. Paper plates groan under the weight of acres of cornbread and mountains of slaw.

Cooking trash talk runs rampant, too: one could be forgiven for thinking that the real contest was a matter of whose crab cakes were the sweetest, and whose ribs were the bone-suckinest’ good.

But it’s always been the classic race day pies that really sparked my interest.

Everyone has their own idea about what constitutes a proper race day pie. But the kind that’s usually associated with the running of the Kentucky Derby – indeed, with horse race events in general – typically contains a healthy slug of bourbon, an idea that’s hard to argue with once you’ve tried it.

They also incorporate chopped pecans, chocolate chips, and an unabashed quantity of melted butter. You don’t need a top crust because what you end up with is a pie that makes its own tender-crisp, cookie-like crust and sports a creamy-sweet center interrupted only by the crunch of pecans and chocolate chip bliss.

In short, a pie that’s way too good to serve only during horse race season. Try it, you’ll see. And chances are good you’ll be hooked into serving this one often, even when there’s not a horse in sight.

PASTRY NOTE: Once again, I like the GOOD BASIC PIE DOUGH for this pie.

Every once in a while I’ll give a talk, or have a conversation with someone, or read an email and I’ll hear a question that goes something like this: Do you ever get tired of making pies?

I like that question. It’s a good question. And it raises an interesting point: If you love what you do, is it normal/okay to grow weary of it from time to time?

I mean, does my dentist ever get tired of sticking sharp implements into gaping mouths? (The fact that I, alone, have put a couple of his kids through college probably alleviates at least some of his weariness.)

Does your pastor ever wish he could wake up on Sunday morning and say heck with my flock; I’m gonna pour me a margarita and listen to some Jimmy Buffett.

Does the President sometimes wish he could drive his own car and get a burger down at the corner greasy spoon without being noticed?

Well, I can’t speak for any of them. But I can tell you that when my pie making spirit starts to wane I resort to an old trick that quickly takes off the pressure to be Super Pie Guy and restores my pie mojo: I make a skillet pie.

A skillet pie is way more than a reference to the vessel the pie is baked in. It’s a method and an attitude that tells the world you’re about to break all the rules and that they – warning: geezer language ahead - can either like it or lump it.

Translation: forget about the bottom crust and peeling your fruit; never mind the thickener, either; ditch the perfectly uniform slices; and don’t worry about making a pretty sculpted edge. In short, thumb your nose at nearly every conceivable pie making convention, and do it with a smile.

Will your my pie making reputation plummet now that you’ve embraced pie anarchy?

On the contrary, it will SOAR once you’ve become the bad boy/bad girl of pie. Your devil-may-care, take it or leave it approach will attract admirers like bees to honey. Your kids, who typically believe you’re about as interesting as a potted plant, will think you’re awesome and start bringing their friends around. Neighbors will whisper, but secretly envy you. You’ll notice a little extra spring in your step.

I’d say it’s worth a shot, wouldn’t you? Here’s one recipe to get you started, you wild thing, you.

PASTRY NOTE: Proving its versatility once more, I recommend my ever-faithful GOOD BASIC PIE DOUGH for the top crust here.

As you know, Sunday is Easter, a day when consuming obscene amounts of chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, and the like is downgraded to a misdemeanor as we indulge our collective passion for chocolate.

What better day, then, to try this Chocolate Cream Pie with Oreo Crumb Crust?

If you’ve never made a cream pie before…or it’s been a while…rest assured that it’s one of the easiest pies you can add to your repertoire. There’s no pastry to prepare – just a simple crumb crust. No fruit to peel or pie bubbling over in the oven. Indeed, nothing to bake at all, aside from the crust.

Bottom line: if you can bring a saucepan of liquid to a boil, you can do this.

Don’t care for Oreos? Then use a graham cracker crust – even, heaven forbid!, one you purchase at the supermarket.

I suppose the most difficult thing about making any cream pie is waiting for the filling to cool off and chill overnight. No cheating on this point. Without the required layover in the fridge, your filling won’t have the cool, silky texture you crave.

Permission is granted, however, to do a less-than-thorough job scraping out the saucepan so you have plenty of chocolate filling to sample.

Happy Easter, and I hope you enjoy the pie.

Ken Haedrich

When you’re the Dean of The Pie Academy and avowed champion of all things pastry, certain people aren’t shy about letting you know when your good graces are expected.

Take, for instance, this email I received the other day from one of my sisters, whom I’ll call Joanne since that’s her name:

It’s Joe’s birthday this week. It would be lovely if you could do something special. He likes almost anything with fruit. Just a suggestion… 

There are a couple of things you should know here: Joe is our brother-in-law, and a few of us are meeting in Marco Island, Florida this week for a mini reunion.

And – despite her email’s accommodating tone – this was not a suggestion: it was a directive, encrypted with the sort of secret family code only a sibling could crack. Roughly translated: If you ever expect to use my beach house again or receive so much as a bag of pretzels next Christmas, you had better show up with something special. 

She needn’t have worried; I planned to anyway. Indeed, I knew this week’s featured recipe – Cherry Almond Coffeecake Tart – would do quite nicely. For one, it travels well. For another, thanks to frozen fruit, it treats us to the flavor and promise of summer when fresh cherry season is still months away.

If you find the phrase coffeecake tart confusing, I take full responsibility. I made it up, but it was the best I could manage to describe this hybrid dessert. There’s crust and plenty of fruit – that’s the tart part – surrounded by what tastes like a very dense, almost marzipan-like almond coffeecake. Linguistically challenging, perhaps, but very easy on the taste buds and eyes.

Speaking of which, you’ll notice that I’ve made this in a tart pan, not a pie pan. I like the tart pan here because there is enough room to arrange the cherries in a single layer, making for a very attractive presentation after it bakes. It also keeps the almond layer to a uniform thickness throughout. However, if you don’t have a tart pan, by all means substitute a pie pan and turn this into a pie.

Or, buy one from my limited stock of Le Creuset tart pans, on special sale this week. (Send me an email if you’d like more details about ordering.)

As for those cherries, I think the quality of frozen fruit is generally much better than it gets credit for. It’s often preferable to fresh. Frozen fruit is picked at the peak of ripeness and flash frozen so it retains its sweetness. Especially when you’re baking with it, it’s a good option. Be sure to blot them on paper towels, as I describe.

Have a great week, enjoy the tart, and keep those emails coming. It’s always great to hear from you.

Ken Haedrich

PASTRY NOTE: While any favorite pie pastry recipe will do, I recommend my GOOOD BASIC PIE DOUGH.  

You know how pie recipes often ask you to partially prebake the crust – mine certainly do – when you’re making custard, pumpkin, and other pies with runny fillings?

When it’s necessary, prebaking is an excellent idea. But in the process you wind up with holes in your bottom crust – holes you put there to keep the pastry from ballooning up and out of control while you’re prebaking it. Even if they’re not Swiss cheese-size holes, your filling can still leak out and make a mess under your crust.

At least, that’s the way it used to be. Once you watch this short video, and see what a simple fix there is, you’ll never again have to suffer the indignity of leaky pie pastry. I hope you’ll watch as I – and my intern, Joe – show you the easiest trick in the world for preventing this common pie maker’s problem.

Ken Haedrich, Dean of The Pie Academy

Let’s talk about dates, the sort that has nothing to do with meeting your soulmate online.

More to the point, let’s talk about Medjool dates because unless you’ve had the good fortune to sample these plump, soft, and exquisitely sweet “king of dates”, well, you just haven’t lived.

According to an article on NPR’s website, Medjool dates first arrived in the United States in 1927. Contrary to the belief wagered by an occasional younger reader, that was not the year my first cookbook was released. It was, however, the year a fellow named Walter Swingle, an American horticulturalist, brought a handful of Medjool offshoots back from Morocco, where disease was destroying the crop. Once here, the dates flourished.

I say a little prayer of thanks to Mr. Swingle whenever I slather peanut butter on my dates for breakfast, help myself to another almond paste-stuffed Medjool at the holidays, or – as you will. too – when I eat a slice of this chewy Medjool date pie.

This date pie is modeled after one I found years ago in Maida Heatter’s Book of Great American Desserts (Knopf, 1985.) She uses the words gooey, chewy and yummy to describe hers and they apply equally well right here. She also says you have to start with the softest dates you can find – not the hard, diced up ones that come in a box – and you won’t find any softer than Medjool.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love shopping for baking supplies at Sam’s Club and they are, in fact, my source for top quality Medjool dates. I can pick up a hefty 2 pound box of them for under eight bucks. The key is to make sure they’re Medjools. There are about a dozen commonly found dates in the United States but not all of them – like Medjools – are categorized as “soft.” There are “semidry” and “dry” dates also, but none that I’m aware of that can match the Medjool for flavor and texture.

So if you’re in the mood for something a little different, I hope you’ll try this pie. It’s one of those good, hold-you-over-till-summer-pies we all need in our repertoire. And don’t worry if you have leftovers: like many pies, it freezes well. Ice cream or whipped cream, it’s your choice. Enjoy.

PASTRY NOTE: You can use any favorite pie pastry to make the pie shell here, but I like my good old reliable GOOD BASIC PIE DOUGH. 

See #33

The other day I was surfing around online while I should have been working, when I stumbled across a blog post – by a guy whose writing I admire – titled 33 Things You Don’t Know About Me. My curiosity got the better of me. So I took the bait and read all 33, which ranged from the mundane to the pretty interesting.

That’s when I decided to steal the idea. This decision had little to do with the fact that I think you’re dying to know 33 things about me you don’t already, and much to do with the reality that the pie I planned to feature this week had just bombed and I needed material. Which leads me to the first thing you don’t know about me:

1. My pies sometimes bomb. This one bombed because I got distracted and forgot the baking soda. Baking soda is an unusual ingredient in pie, which is the other reason I forgot it.

2. I’m not friendly, engaging, or the life of the party when I’m cooking, like the people you see in ads on TV. I’ll probably ask you to leave the kitchen.

3. I collect vintage mixing bowls I find on eBay. No, I don’t know why. And yes, I think it’s a little weird, too.

4. My wife doesn’t approve of my mixing bowl collecting, so I always pray they’re delivered when she isn’t here.

5. I have made thousands of pies in my life, and still can’t make one as good as my Dad’s apple pie. And he just made them sporadically.

6. I rarely watch cooking shows on television. I’d rather be cooking.

7. I know how to cook stuff that has nothing to do with pie. My new cookbook – the one I’m working on now – is all about comfort foods like meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and dreamy macaroni and cheese. You know, diet food.

8. My first wedding was a big pancake breakfast. My love of pancakes endures. The marriage didn’t. (Read all about it.)

9. I’m a morning person. I’m useless before my first cup of Chock full o’ Nuts. I love my Mr. Coffee. Every time I spend money on a new/expensive coffee maker, I’m disappointed.

10. I believe there’s little or no correlation between granite countertops, pricey cookware and the other trappings of a “gourmet kitchen” and the quality of your meals or how much pleasure you get from cooking.

11. That doesn’t stop me from having a crush on some pricey cookware I’d love to own, like Staub.

12. I take a size 15 shoe. Understandably, I have a very limited footwear collection.

13. Most of my favorite places to eat are barbecue joints.

14. I could eat collards or kale every day of the week if you do ‘em right. I plan to show you how. (See #7.)

15. I was once a Realtor. It was way out of whack with #31 so I got out.

16. My refrigerator is probably just as bad as yours, maybe worse. I occasionally find Tupperware containers of things dating back to the Clinton administration.

17. One of my sons – Ben Price – is a world class backcountry snowboarder. Somebody made a video about him (below.) I’m proud of him and all my kids.

18. Wine puts me to sleep. My idea of hell-on-earth is a 7-course meal with 5 different wines, something I once frequently endured on press junkets.

19. The only hard liquor in my cabinet is tequila and triple sec. Three guesses what my favorite drink is.

20. The most useful gizmo in my kitchen is my old Chef’s Choice knife sharpener. Dull knives are a real pet peeve and very dangerous.

21. Much of my most treasured kitchen gear is more than 25 years old.

22. Jeopardy! is my favorite game show. I’m pretty good at it.

23. I like to eat dinner in front of the TV.

24. I love it when you email to tell me about your pie challenges, comment on a recipe or video, or just to say hello. Don’t stop.

25. Food shopping is often the highlight of my day. Sam’s Club is a blast. Their frozen, blackened Atlantic salmon fillets are a staple at dinner.

26. The best fruit pies I ever baked were made with blackberries my kids and I used to pick along a logging road when we lived in rural New Hampshire.

27. My favorite honey in the world is made in Hawaii by Richard Spiegel at his Volcano Island Honey. Here’s a story I wrote about him for National Geographic Traveler.

28. I’m sorta shy, but I love public speaking. Go figure.

29. I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. (My wife will confirm that I have a ways to go yet.) I think “itinerant filmmaker” has a nice ring to it.

30. I believe there are few places on earth as lovely as the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where I live now.

The Lowcountry of South Carolina

31. I think the most important question you can ask yourself is: If money were no object, what sort of work would I want to be doing? Then figure out a way to go and do that.

32. I believe the best seasoning in the world is fresh air, so I love to eat outdoors.

33. I’m self conscious about the dark circles under my eyes. I call them raccoon eyes and I try to cover them up with makeup when I do my videos. This usually just makes them look like green circles since I’m not great with makeup.

So, what are you doing for your Valentine on Thursday? Candy? Flowers? A romantic candlelight dinner?

Whatever your plans, I hope there’s room for this decadent pie. It would be the perfect way to cap off a day of loving gestures. And your beloved will be smitten. (As if you could go wrong with any recipe that has both chocolate and silk in the title, right?)

If you’ve never eaten this pie before, it’s a little hard to categorize. It’s not really a chiffon pie, but it has much in common with the airy texture of one. It’s quite creamy, too, like a cheesecake, but it’s lighter and it’s not baked. Imagine a cloud-like chocolate frosting masquerading as a pie. Hard to find fault with that.

Pastry-phobes take note: there’s no pastry to roll. Many versions of this pie do use a pastry crust, but I’ve used a chocolate Oreo crust instead. If there’s anything difficult about the recipe at all, it’s that there’s a fair amount of beating involved. I suppose you could do it, but I’ve never even tried doing this with a hand held electric mixer. I’ve always used my stand mixer.

I like to put a puddle of vanilla custard sauce on the plate along with the pie. Not that it’s really necessary; just another excuse to serve my favorite dessert sauce. But the sauce provides a colorful backdrop, and I like the way it looks when you float your little hearts in it. (Tip: don’t sweeten the whipped cream if you’re making it from scratch. The combination of the pie and sauce is already plenty sweet enough.)

Happy Valentine’s Day.

NOTE: Here’s where you can find the recipe for VANILLA CUSTARD SAUCE

Vanilla ice cream is always wonderful with pie, but for something a little different try this Vanilla Custard Sauce.

It’s crucial that you watch it carefully and use moderate heat so it doesn’t curdle and turn into sweet scrambled eggs. It can be used warm, but it’s more full bodied and tastes better – I think – when served cold.