Yesterday I decided at the last minute I was going to make a quick dessert for a friend's Steelers party. Whenever I do anything last minute, I almost inevitably end up doing a drop cookie or a shortbread cookie because the ingredients are easy to grab and after a while, you can make them in your sleep.
However, yesterday I had a lot of fruit that needed to be used and a crisp seemed like the perfect fall dessert (incidentally, I also made a peanut butter cookie, but that's for another post).
Cooks Illustrated last month did an article on apple crisp and how it's always just ok, but not great, because crisp is an easy, afterthought dessert. Food Network magazine also did a spread on fruit crisps a few months ago. You essentially need fruit, sugar, flour, butter, brown sugar, a nut and a grain. The different varieties of crisp possible from this formula are endless.
For instance, yesterday I made a crisp of cherries, blueberries and Italian plums with a hit of allspice and topped it with an almond oatmeal crumble and brought fresh cinnamon whipped cream. I thought it turned out great, except that it was overly juicy. If I had to do it again, I would bake it like this recipe calls for, which has you cook the fruit on the stove top first and then bake it, but when you are in a hurry, these extra steps aren't really necessary.
You could also do a decadent pear crisp with a walnut, flax and oat streusel topping. Or a raspberry and blackberry crisp with a pecan, honey, and cornmeal streusel. See what I mean?
Your options are limitless once you learn the basic formula for crisp. For your basic crisp formula, go here, to the Food Network guide. They teach you the basics really well in this handy little article.
If you aren't in the mood to make crisp at home, but do so love a fruit crisp as all Sugar Lovin people must, crisp is fairly easy to get anywhere you go. Here in Pittsburgh, the Pie Place has a cherry crisp and an apple crisp daily, and occasionally does a peach crisp or a mixed berry crisp.
This is also a common restaurant dessert. My favorite is from Eleven in the strip. They do an apple crumble pie which is delectable. In reality, it's a new take on a dutch apple pie, but then that's kind of what apple crisp is to begin with.
In Chicago, at Hot Chocolate in the Wicker Park neighborhood, pastry chef Mindy Segal has dreamed up everything from a raspberry crisp (summer seasonal dessert) to her glorious apple for the fall (notice the apple theme is going to start ringing loud and clear now that we've entered the fall).
In a pinch, make a fruit crisp. They are quick, easy and super-tasty as long as you can get the basics down. Plus, in a worst-case scenario, you can always top the crisp with a big dollop of vanilla ice cream to disguise the flaws!
Showing posts with label the pie place. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the pie place. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Cinnamon-y treats
There is something about cinnamon that just screams fall. Right or wrong, I will almost immediately catalogue any dessert with a hint of cinnamon as a fall dessert. Maybe it's the close connection it has with pumpkin pie or apple pie, maybe it has to do with the cinnamon spiced ciders only available after October at most coffee shops. Either way, I think cinnamon, I think fall. I also think about cinnamon coffee cake. And cinnamon rolls. And Jean Marc Chatellier's cinnamon croissants.
In the meantime, I've mentally gained 5 pounds as I salivate over these Cinnamon Sugar Lovin Sweets.
We'll start with cinnamon coffee cake, or crumb cake as you may know it. This is the cake you'll recognize by the delicious cinnamon-brown sugar streusel topping, usually covered in powdered sugar. To a New Yorker, a crumb cake is a yeast raised cake with a crumb topping. This particular kind is native to the German-Jewish bakeries in particular. Outside of New York City, most bakeries are making a yellow or white cake of some kind and finishing it with a streusel topping. This method for making crumb cake is far less time-consuming than a yeast raised cake and has a more mainstream flavor. Yeast in cake just isn't something we are used to these days.
One of the better places for crumb cake (other than my Grandma's kitchen, of course)? Starbucks. It seems lame, but they have a very good coffee/crumb cake. Just ignore the calories in it and you'll be fine. Coffee shops in general have a very good crumb cakes- they kind of need to since it goes oh so well with a hot cup of java.
In Pittsburgh, your best bet for amazing coffee cake is at Aldo Coffee in Mt. Lebanon. They also have really great lattes and coffee with amazingly knowledgeable baristas. Just beware, if you aren't a regular, you might not enjoy the kindest of service.
If you are feeling brave, here's a great coffee cake recipe from a blog I follow regularly, Smitten Kitchen. I would eliminate the rhubarb and fruit altogether myself, but to each their own!
Other cinnamon Sugar Lovin fall treats to try? The oh-so-obvious cinnamon rolls. Now, with cinnamon rolls, your best bet is just to find a really good bakery and let them do the hard work for you. A real cinnamon roll is a lot of time and effort and it's truly hard to take a shortcut and get the same result. In Pittsburgh, we have no shortage of great cinnamon rolls. The Pie Place makes a delectable cinnamon rolls, with the classic confectioner sugar glaze. Others who are looking for a cream cheese iced cinnamon roll might want to try Prantl's.
If you really wanted to make one at home, try this recipe. It's faster than the traditional cinnamon roll, and manages to make a tasty cinnamon sugar treat.
The last cinnamon goodie you must try is a cinnamon croissant from Jean Marc Chatellier's in Millvale. You've probably all had a chocolate croissant or an almond croissant, but a cinnamon croissant is unique and delicious, especially when it comes from Jean Marc's little French bakery.
Cinnamon sweets are back again to grace the fall season. Make sure to try at least one and honor that Cinnamon Sugar Lovin fall craving!
Jean Marc Chatellier's Cinnamon Croissant on the Sugar Love Scale
Taste ♥♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥♥
Vegetables in your sweets
As the summers fresh harvest is drawing to a close, you might find that if your plants survived the heat, you are overloaded with vegetables like zucchini. Zucchini is one of those vegetables that's very versatile, but let's face it, we get sick of eating it all the time.
Thankfully, some creative mother ages ago (back in the medieval times to be exact) came up with a great way to disguise vegetables in layers of sugar and spice. The real story is that during medieval times, sweeteners were expensive and scarce, so in order to make a sweet bread, they used carrots, which is the vegetable with the highest amount of natural sugar after sugar beets. This is how carrot cake was born.
Although it's called carrot cake, it's actually a misnomer. Carrot cake, like zucchini bread, is a quick bread, which means it's a bread made with a chemical leavener, such as baking powder or baking soda, instead of yeast. In making quick breads, you mix all your wet ingredients together and then all your dry ingredients together. You add the wet to the dry and allow it to mix for several minutes.
Beyond carrot cake, zucchini cake, zucchini bread, muffins, and scones are just a few ways to blend the wholesome goodness of summer vegetables into the folds of deliciously sweet goodies made for early fall eating. In August's Bon Appetit magazine, you can find a great recipe for a zucchini pecan cake to get you ready for fall flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg.
Here are some other great recipes for some vegetables-masquerading-as-sweets concoctions:
Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing: I would add 1 cup of raisins or crushed pineapple to this recipe to make it a little bit more moist.
Sweet Potato & Zucchini Bread: A slightly more interesting version of plain old zucchini bread.
Carrot Muffins: Made with a little bit of whole wheat flour!
Carrot Ginger Scones: My recipe- a little bit of a twist on a popular ginger scone.
Around Pittsburgh, there are some amazing choices for carrot cake. Nearly every bakery in town has carrot cake or a carrot cake cupcake. The Pie Place, Bethel Bakery, Priory Not-So-Fine Pastries, Vanilla Pastry Studio, Oakmont Bakery, etc. Carrot cake has a nice place that sits between a traditional german style bakery and a newer, specialty bakery, so you are apt to find it many places. My favorite so far is the Whole Foods Market carrot cake, with the Pie Place's coming in close second.
Summer is coming to a fast close, with that 60 degree weather right around the corner, so get your veggies now, just hide them in a cake!
Whole Foods Market Carrot Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥.75
Thankfully, some creative mother ages ago (back in the medieval times to be exact) came up with a great way to disguise vegetables in layers of sugar and spice. The real story is that during medieval times, sweeteners were expensive and scarce, so in order to make a sweet bread, they used carrots, which is the vegetable with the highest amount of natural sugar after sugar beets. This is how carrot cake was born.
Although it's called carrot cake, it's actually a misnomer. Carrot cake, like zucchini bread, is a quick bread, which means it's a bread made with a chemical leavener, such as baking powder or baking soda, instead of yeast. In making quick breads, you mix all your wet ingredients together and then all your dry ingredients together. You add the wet to the dry and allow it to mix for several minutes.
Beyond carrot cake, zucchini cake, zucchini bread, muffins, and scones are just a few ways to blend the wholesome goodness of summer vegetables into the folds of deliciously sweet goodies made for early fall eating. In August's Bon Appetit magazine, you can find a great recipe for a zucchini pecan cake to get you ready for fall flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg.
Here are some other great recipes for some vegetables-masquerading-as-sweets concoctions:
Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing: I would add 1 cup of raisins or crushed pineapple to this recipe to make it a little bit more moist.
Sweet Potato & Zucchini Bread: A slightly more interesting version of plain old zucchini bread.
Carrot Muffins: Made with a little bit of whole wheat flour!
Carrot Ginger Scones: My recipe- a little bit of a twist on a popular ginger scone.
Around Pittsburgh, there are some amazing choices for carrot cake. Nearly every bakery in town has carrot cake or a carrot cake cupcake. The Pie Place, Bethel Bakery, Priory Not-So-Fine Pastries, Vanilla Pastry Studio, Oakmont Bakery, etc. Carrot cake has a nice place that sits between a traditional german style bakery and a newer, specialty bakery, so you are apt to find it many places. My favorite so far is the Whole Foods Market carrot cake, with the Pie Place's coming in close second.
Summer is coming to a fast close, with that 60 degree weather right around the corner, so get your veggies now, just hide them in a cake!
Whole Foods Market Carrot Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥.75
Red Velvet Cake- the basics
There are a lot of good box cakes. It's something you can make in a pinch when you are short on time and ingredients and need to bring a dessert. You can even doctor up box cakes to make them into something extra delicious by adding canned fruit, sour cream, applesauce, etc. But red velvet cake is just not something that can come from a box.
For starters, a good red velvet cake recipe uses buttermilk or sour milk (vinegar + milk) and a small dose of baking soda and vinegar to give it a slightly tangy, sour taste. Your red velvet box mix contains sugar, flour, shortening, cocoa powder and baking soda, plus a lot of stabilizers and preservatives. It only calls for eggs, oil, and water. So no matter what, you are going to miss that delightful hint of tang that a true red velvet cake gives you. And although the box might say it's moist and delightful, it's not going to hold a candle to a true red velvet cake.
The other key piece that makes a made-from-scratch red velvet cake so much better is the proportion of cocoa powder to flour. In a box cake, you are kind of stuck with what they think tastes best, but at home, you can play a little bit more to decide how much cocoa flavor you really want in the cake.
The origin of red velvet cake is unknown, but it's been around for a while. In the 1920's, it was the signature dessert at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Legend has it that in the 1960's a patron asked for the recipe and she received it, but was billed a LARGE amount for it. She payed it, but then spread the recipe in a chain letter. Whether or not this is true, remains to be seen, but red velvet cake has since made it's way onto menus and into bakeries across the country.
My preferred red velvet cake recipe is here. It's really moist and delicious and pairs well with a buttercream icing or a cream cheese icing. It also makes a nice base for red velvet gobbs, although you need to add an extra egg and more flour for it to bind correctly.
If I've convinced you to abandon box cake mix for red velvet cake, but you still aren't in the mood to make your own, there are certainly a few places in town with a great red velvet cake.
Vanilla Pastry Studio: they don't always have the "Elvis has left the building" red velvet cupcake, so you might want to call ahead, but April Simpson-Gruver makes a killer red velvet cake.
The Pie Place: they always have cupcakes and they sometimes have cake. Call ahead to have them set aside for you- they go fast!
Oakmont Bakery: be prepared to be here staring at all the options and salivating for hours. But also know that they have red velvet cake and red velvet cupcakes all the time. The red velvet cupcakes are known as Red Carpet cupcakes and are superbly worthy of Sugar Loving cravings.
Oakmont Bakery’s Red Carpet Cupcake on the Sugar Love Scale
Taste ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Texture ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Appearance ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Overall ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
For starters, a good red velvet cake recipe uses buttermilk or sour milk (vinegar + milk) and a small dose of baking soda and vinegar to give it a slightly tangy, sour taste. Your red velvet box mix contains sugar, flour, shortening, cocoa powder and baking soda, plus a lot of stabilizers and preservatives. It only calls for eggs, oil, and water. So no matter what, you are going to miss that delightful hint of tang that a true red velvet cake gives you. And although the box might say it's moist and delightful, it's not going to hold a candle to a true red velvet cake.
The other key piece that makes a made-from-scratch red velvet cake so much better is the proportion of cocoa powder to flour. In a box cake, you are kind of stuck with what they think tastes best, but at home, you can play a little bit more to decide how much cocoa flavor you really want in the cake.
The origin of red velvet cake is unknown, but it's been around for a while. In the 1920's, it was the signature dessert at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Legend has it that in the 1960's a patron asked for the recipe and she received it, but was billed a LARGE amount for it. She payed it, but then spread the recipe in a chain letter. Whether or not this is true, remains to be seen, but red velvet cake has since made it's way onto menus and into bakeries across the country.
My preferred red velvet cake recipe is here. It's really moist and delicious and pairs well with a buttercream icing or a cream cheese icing. It also makes a nice base for red velvet gobbs, although you need to add an extra egg and more flour for it to bind correctly.
If I've convinced you to abandon box cake mix for red velvet cake, but you still aren't in the mood to make your own, there are certainly a few places in town with a great red velvet cake.
Vanilla Pastry Studio: they don't always have the "Elvis has left the building" red velvet cupcake, so you might want to call ahead, but April Simpson-Gruver makes a killer red velvet cake.
The Pie Place: they always have cupcakes and they sometimes have cake. Call ahead to have them set aside for you- they go fast!
Oakmont Bakery: be prepared to be here staring at all the options and salivating for hours. But also know that they have red velvet cake and red velvet cupcakes all the time. The red velvet cupcakes are known as Red Carpet cupcakes and are superbly worthy of Sugar Loving cravings.
Oakmont Bakery’s Red Carpet Cupcake on the Sugar Love Scale
Taste ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Texture ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Appearance ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Overall ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Peachy Sweet Pastries
Peach pie, peach cobbler, peach crisp, peach ice cream, peach preserves on a warm biscuit, peach cookies...this list could go on and on. Peaches have a natural and delicious sweetness that makes them delightful when eaten plain and even better when eaten as part of a treat.
There are four main varieties of peaches- freestone yellow, freestone white, clingstone yellow and clingstone white. They are rather self explanatory varieties- the freestone yellow, for instance, has a yellow inside that easily is removed from the pit or "stone". The flavors vacillate between very sweet with little tang (mostly yellow varieties) to very sweet with a lot of tang (mostly white varieties), and although most are fine for baking, bakers tend to prefer freestone varieties due to the ease of removing the fruit from the stone.
Whatever variety you choose, peaches are best purchased fresh in the summer, or frozen during anytime of the year. For a fun summer afternoon outing, you could go to Simmons Farm in McMurray and pick your own peaches!
Once you have your bushel, you'll need a few ideas for quick and easy delicious peach treats:
Grilled Peaches with Whipped Cream
Peach & Pecan Bars
Peach Almond Crumble
Around Pittsburgh, you can indulge your Sugar Lovin craving for a peachy treat at any of these local bakeries:
The Pie Place: Great place to stop for a individual peach tart, a peach raspberry torte, or a slice of peach crisp. Order warmed with a scoop of vanilla ice cream a la mode!
Sweet Tammy's: Yes, let's just get past the fact that I'm not in love with this bakery....but she does make a really nice brown sugar peach pie. Think of it like dutch apple pie, but with peaches instead.
Chik Fil A: So no, it's not local, but they do a killer peach milkshake all summer long that you shouldn't miss out on.
Happy Peachy Eating!
Chik Fil A's Peach Milkshake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥.5
Appearnce ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥.5
There are four main varieties of peaches- freestone yellow, freestone white, clingstone yellow and clingstone white. They are rather self explanatory varieties- the freestone yellow, for instance, has a yellow inside that easily is removed from the pit or "stone". The flavors vacillate between very sweet with little tang (mostly yellow varieties) to very sweet with a lot of tang (mostly white varieties), and although most are fine for baking, bakers tend to prefer freestone varieties due to the ease of removing the fruit from the stone.
Whatever variety you choose, peaches are best purchased fresh in the summer, or frozen during anytime of the year. For a fun summer afternoon outing, you could go to Simmons Farm in McMurray and pick your own peaches!
Once you have your bushel, you'll need a few ideas for quick and easy delicious peach treats:
Grilled Peaches with Whipped Cream
Peach & Pecan Bars
Peach Almond Crumble
Around Pittsburgh, you can indulge your Sugar Lovin craving for a peachy treat at any of these local bakeries:
The Pie Place: Great place to stop for a individual peach tart, a peach raspberry torte, or a slice of peach crisp. Order warmed with a scoop of vanilla ice cream a la mode!
Sweet Tammy's: Yes, let's just get past the fact that I'm not in love with this bakery....but she does make a really nice brown sugar peach pie. Think of it like dutch apple pie, but with peaches instead.
Chik Fil A: So no, it's not local, but they do a killer peach milkshake all summer long that you shouldn't miss out on.
Happy Peachy Eating!
Chik Fil A's Peach Milkshake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥.5
Appearnce ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥.5
Friday, August 20, 2010
Old Post 10: Late night bakeries
At 5 pm this past Wednesday, a friend asked what bakery she should go to buy a birthday cake for the next day. Oh, the procrastination! To add to the issue, she also needed the bakery to be open "late".
Late in bakery time means anything past 5 pm; 5 pm is closing time as most bakeries are open by at least 7 am, if not 6 am. You drastically narrow your options when you need a "late" night bakery. In fact, there were really only 3 options to give:
1. Whole Foods Market
2. The Pie Place
3. Giant Eagle Market District
Let's start with Giant Eagle. It's important to specify the Market District chain. Although they are not as easy to find, their bakery is leaps and bounds above the regular stores. The cakes look nicer and they have more variety. The big problem with a Giant Eagle cake is freshness. So many cakes from Giant Eagle are incredibly dry. The other big issue is that they tend to over-ice the cake. When the icing is incredibly sweet and overdone and the cake is dry, you end up with a terrible mouthfeel . This is the "last resort" recommendation, although for super-procrastinators, Market Districts are open very late and can save you in a real time crunch.
The other two choices really come down to what direction you are going in. If you are headed south, The Pie Place is a great choice. Located in Upper St. Clair, they are open Monday through Thursday until 8pm and Friday & Saturday until 9 pm. They always have carrot cake and cheesecake on hand and can be really flexible with orders- most being filled in 24 hours.
If you are in the city, Whole Foods Market is another excellent choice. Located in East Liberty on Centre Ave, Whole Foods is open until 10 pm every night and have a nice selection of cakes to choose from.
It's funny how you sometimes need your own advice. This past Friday night, it was a very close friend’s birthday extravaganza. Bound and determined to make a homemade cake, the baking began in the O'Brien sweatbox around 4 pm. At 7:30 pm, it had to be abandoned. In the extreme heat and humidity, the cake and icing wouldn't come together properly. The party was in the city, so it was off to Whole Foods to find a chocolate cake.
At 9:15 pm, they still had a decent selection and we ended up buying two cakes. One was a simple chocolate mousse cake. It was 3 layers of a devils food cake filled and iced with creamy chocolate mousse and topped with whipped cream. The other was a Norwegian Heaven Cake. This was a devils food cake filled with a vanilla Bavarian-style cream glazed with a dark chocolate ganache and topped with fresh berries.
The cakes were moist and flavorful, which is incredibly hard to achieve with chocolate cake of any kind when it must sit in a case all day, and the fillings were not overpowering. The fresh berries a top the Norwegian Heaven Cake were especially delightful and balanced the heavy chocolate cake and ganache.
Procrastinators, never fear. Whole Foods and the Pie Place have you covered for "late" night cakes.
Whole Foods Market Norwegian Heave Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥♥
4 out of 5 ♥’s
1. Whole Foods Market
2. The Pie Place
3. Giant Eagle Market District
Let's start with Giant Eagle. It's important to specify the Market District chain. Although they are not as easy to find, their bakery is leaps and bounds above the regular stores. The cakes look nicer and they have more variety. The big problem with a Giant Eagle cake is freshness. So many cakes from Giant Eagle are incredibly dry. The other big issue is that they tend to over-ice the cake. When the icing is incredibly sweet and overdone and the cake is dry, you end up with a terrible mouthfeel . This is the "last resort" recommendation, although for super-procrastinators, Market Districts are open very late and can save you in a real time crunch.
The other two choices really come down to what direction you are going in. If you are headed south, The Pie Place is a great choice. Located in Upper St. Clair, they are open Monday through Thursday until 8pm and Friday & Saturday until 9 pm. They always have carrot cake and cheesecake on hand and can be really flexible with orders- most being filled in 24 hours.
If you are in the city, Whole Foods Market is another excellent choice. Located in East Liberty on Centre Ave, Whole Foods is open until 10 pm every night and have a nice selection of cakes to choose from.
It's funny how you sometimes need your own advice. This past Friday night, it was a very close friend’s birthday extravaganza. Bound and determined to make a homemade cake, the baking began in the O'Brien sweatbox around 4 pm. At 7:30 pm, it had to be abandoned. In the extreme heat and humidity, the cake and icing wouldn't come together properly. The party was in the city, so it was off to Whole Foods to find a chocolate cake.
At 9:15 pm, they still had a decent selection and we ended up buying two cakes. One was a simple chocolate mousse cake. It was 3 layers of a devils food cake filled and iced with creamy chocolate mousse and topped with whipped cream. The other was a Norwegian Heaven Cake. This was a devils food cake filled with a vanilla Bavarian-style cream glazed with a dark chocolate ganache and topped with fresh berries.
The cakes were moist and flavorful, which is incredibly hard to achieve with chocolate cake of any kind when it must sit in a case all day, and the fillings were not overpowering. The fresh berries a top the Norwegian Heaven Cake were especially delightful and balanced the heavy chocolate cake and ganache.
Procrastinators, never fear. Whole Foods and the Pie Place have you covered for "late" night cakes.
Whole Foods Market Norwegian Heave Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥♥
4 out of 5 ♥’s
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Old Post 3: Pie- the perfect man-dessert
At the end of Father's Day Weekend, pie pans are being picked at during the late night refrigerator visits all across America.
There is something about pie that says "man-dessert". Fruit pie, cream pie, close cousins of pie such as crumbles, crisps, or cobblers- pie is man-dessert. Chunky drop-style cookies might be a close second, and ice cream a third. Cakes and delicate, fancy desserts just don't translate well in man-world. What is it about pie that makes it so perfect for men?
For starters, the summer hosts many masculine holidays to celebrate. Memorial Day, Father's Day, July 4th, and Labor Day all fall in the summer and each holiday has a primarily masculine undertone. They celebrate war veterans, fathers, America's forefathers declaring independence, and the rights of American laborers in the 1800s; all of these primarily focus on the male given stereotypical gender roles of the past. The classic dessert for these celebrations is an apple pie, though there are so many other flavors to choose from.
Another attribute that makes pie the perfect man-dessert: all truly delicious pies start with a flaky yet tender, buttery crust. They are generally then filled with chunky fruit fillings or custard fillings. Pies aren't a very delicate dessert. You can't (or really shouldn't) drape a pie with fondant and top it with gum-paste flowers. Its sensibility appeals to masculine logic and its simplicity enhances its man sugar-love factor.
Like Bubba in Forrest Gump talking about the different ways to use shrimp, one could sit and list the different types of pie you could make. One could also go over the differences in pies, tortes, and tarts. Given the fact that the more you see the word pie, the hungrier you become for pie, let's skip right to the part about where you can purchase the best pies in all of Pittsburgh.
Nestled near the Border's bookstore in Upper St. Clair you'll find The Pie Place. Unlike most of the specialty item bakeries popping up around town dedicated to cupcakes or wedding cakes, the Pie Place pays homage to the pie and all of it's close cousins, like the cherry crisp or apple strudel. You can even find a Boston Cream Pie on a daily basis, even though a Boston Cream Pie is actually a cake, not a pie. Beyond their pies, you'll find a wide variety of cakes, cookies, ice cream, and coffee.
To indulge your man-dessert craving, the Pie Place is does offer the largest daily variety of fresh fruit and cream pies you'll find in Pittsburgh- not to mention the flakiest, most tender pie crust in the city.
On the Sugar-Love scale, the pie crust would get 5 hearts overall, but Sugar-Love evaluates a whole product, not just a crust. Pie enthusiasts of Pittsburgh, you must make haste to the Pie Place.
The Peach Tart, warmed and served a la mode on the Sugar Love Scale
Taste ♥♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥♥♥
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