Our New Video Course – GREAT AMERICAN CREAM PIES – Is Live

August 11, 2018

The Pie Academy presents Great American Cream Pies

It’s a really big day here at The Pie Academy. After months of planning and production, our new video course is live. In a recent survey, you – our Pie Academy members – told me that you adore cream pies (evidently as much as I do) and you’d love to see a video course all about them. I listened, and got busy. I might have put on a pound or two in the process. Briefly, GREAT AMERICAN CREAM PIES is…

News, Recipes, Savory Pies

Crème Fraîche Corn Quiche

July 28, 2018

Creme Fraiche Corn Quiche from The Harvest Baker by Ken Haedrich

This is not the first fresh corn pie recipe you’ve seen here at The Pie Academy and it probably won’t be the last, though, sadly, it will be the last for 2018. Sigh… Forgive me for sulking, but it’s a measure of my love for fresh corn that I can bemoan the passing of corn season even while we’re still in the midst of one. The three dozen ears Bev and I steamed, cut, and tucked away in the freezer…

Fruit Pies, Sweet Pies

Fresh Peach and Cherry Pie

June 30, 2018

Fresh Peach & Cherry Pie courtesy of Ken Haedrich and ThePieAcademy.com

Like so many well-meaning cooks today, I spend my share of time clicking on and collecting recipes I fancy I’ll make one day. Cooking-wise, the online-curator me is a lot more impressive and adventurous than the actual me, a reality gap, they tell me, not uncommon to online dating sites. Anyway, my obsession du jour is, understandably, peaches, which – if my crammed virtual recipe boxes are any indication – I soon intend to brandy, churn (ice cream), poach, ice…

Fruit Pies, Recipes

The Freezer Fruit Pie Challenge: Your Photos and Stories and our Top Picks

June 3, 2018

The Pie Academy Freezer Fruit Pie Challenge

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about rummaging through my post-winter freezer and digging out little baggies of frozen fruit to make a pie. Frugal chap that I am, I wanted to use up these remnants before starting a new fresh fruit pie season. I challenged you to do the same, and to send along photos of your creations. I called it the Freezer Fruit Pie Challenge. A number of you did – like Chad Nelson, whose Triple…

Fruit Pies, News, Recipes

The Freezer Fruit Pie Challenge

May 12, 2018

Freezer Fruit Pie at The Pie Academy.com

No sooner had I posted last week’s story about Blueberry Buttermilk Pie than I began to feel a little twitch of guilt about purchasing fresh blueberries for said pie. Yes, they were only a few bucks. But I’m a frugal by osmosis. The son of depression era parents simply doesn’t waste frozen fruit, even odd little baggies of it scattered across the freezer like castoffs from a doomed Arctic expedition. So I took a vow and challenged myself – and…

Fruit Pies, Recipes

Blueberry Buttermilk Pie

May 6, 2018

We’re still a few weeks away from spring blueberries here in coastal North Carolina, and being a patient sort of fellow I typically don’t mind the wait. But this past week I found myself in the thrall of some long distance berries I simply couldn’t resist. I’d gone to the market with no intention of jumping the season and making a blueberry pie. In fact I’d settled, happily, on a buttermilk one, intending to skip the fruit altogether during these…

Recipes, Savory Pies

Swiss Chard Galette

March 31, 2018

My wife Bev and I just returned from a trip to Charlottesville, Virginia where I was a speaker at the 2018 Virginia Festival of the Book. As Bev will attest, it’s often difficult (maddening is the term she’d probably use) to get me out the door and away from my desk and kitchen. For better or for worse, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m something of a homebody. Yet when I do wrest myself away – usually for some work-related reason…

Recipes, Savory Pies

Spaghetti Squash and Parmesan Cheese Quiche

March 18, 2018

It’s March, not exactly peak season for pie makers, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m stretching when our featured recipe is a quiche made with spaghetti squash. Forgiven, but mistaken. But this is no stretch. It’s about shining a light on one of my favorite veggies of all time, one that’s both under-appreciated and overly intimidating for one inescapable reason: spaghetti squash is a bear to cut open, a problem I’ve tackled head-on in the video below. I’ve…

Recipes, Sweet Pies

Black Bottom Peanut Butter Cream Pie

March 10, 2018

Courtesy of Ken Haedrich dean of The Pie Academy

You may remember a few weeks ago I sent out a survey asking what sort of courses you’d like to see offered at The Pie Academy going forward. Somewhat surprisingly (at the time) cream pies got a whole lot of love. In hindsight, I don’t know why that came as a surprise. After all, cream pies hold a place of honor in the pantheon of American pies. Nothing says “comfort food dessert” quite like a creamy vanilla or chocolate…

News, Recipes

Pie Zero to Pie Hero

February 23, 2018

Sound the trumpets, light the fireworks, and dust off your rolling pins…the ebook you’ve been waiting for is ready. So I began this project about six months ago with one purpose in mind – to create a concise, accessible volume that puts home bakers at ease about making pie crust and more pies, sweet and savory. Period. Not those pieces-of-art pies that are everywhere on Instagram and Pinterest. Not fancy ingredient pies. Just pie, as in something-really-good-to-eat, flaky-crusted pie. I’ve…