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Pecan Pie

This pie was legend in my ex's family. His grandmother Irene had made it for years and once she'd entered the State Fair of Texas pecan pie contest, she won it for 7 years straight. The only reason she stopped winning, they told me, was because she stopped entering.

That's a good enough reason to make this pie. It's been proven over generations, and even for the seal of approval from a big pecan state. The pecan state, as far as I'm concerned.

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Espresso Walnut Cookies

Emma really went to bat for the Espresso Walnut Cookies out of Cookies and Brownies. She tested the cookies three times, each time getting a different result. Here are her findings:

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Art of the Pie

Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you about my pie hang-ups. I think it started when I was about 10 and I made my first pie, I think a cherry with a lattice top. I say I think because I never got to taste that pie. My little bother and I were always fighting, and at 4 he didn't have a grasp (or maybe be did) of how sublimely irritating he could be. When the pie was cooling on the table, he sat next to it - staring at it - until my parents sent me upstairs for fear I would hit him just for breathing all over it.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

The first time I made these chocolate chip cookies was when I first bought my copy of Cookies and Brownies. That was nearly ten years ago, and I was in pastry school at the time. I'd been a longtime user of the standard Toll House Cookie recipe, and I remember being really surprised and happy with the variations in this book. In fact, the book falls open to the chocolate chip cookie recipe, it's so worn, water-stained and annotated.

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