Pie

The Beranbaum family fell in love with this pie at a diner called Big Boy in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. We were addicted to this pie, consisting of a crisp crust filled only with fresh strawberries held together by a fruit juice glaze. We would drive fifty miles to Big Boy every weekend just to have it. When I tried to duplicate it in my kitchen, I discovered that a fruit glaze also works well with fresh raspberries or a mixture of raspberries and currants. The glaze preserves the freshness of the fruit for two days.

(Baked in a Tart Pan) For people who find even my less sweet Pecan Pie too sweet, or who are hopeless chocolate lovers, this is the answer. Cocoa perfectly tempers the sweetness of the filling and adds a full chocolate flavor that goes so well with pecans. If correctly baked, the filling, when cut, is soft and slightly molten. The surface of the pie is unusually appealing. Unlike the regular pecan pie where you can see clearly the shape of each nut, this filling cloaks the nuts with a dark milk-chocolaty glisten so you can just make out their shape.

This pie needs no introduction. It probably doesn't even need a recipe—everyone has a favorite way to make it. Here is mine.

This pie crust is light, flaky tender and very crisp. It has a glorious butter flavor and is an ideal container for any pie or tart recipe. I strongly recommend commercial or homemade pastry flour, as it will result in a more tender crust than one made with all-purpose flour.

This delicious dessert uses the Easy Pie Crust .

Ginger and cinnamon give the classic peach pie a makeover.

Developed in 1923, the boysenberry is a hybrid of the blackberry, raspberry and loganberry.

Have fun with this variation on an old favorite.

Here's a colorful and creative pie: Apricots, which flourish in California, Hawaiian pineapple and Oregon cranberries come together in a filling that offers a terrific balance of the exotic and the traditional. It's good with vanilla ice cream.

Pumpkin pies have long been favored in New England; there is a recipe for a "pompkin" pie in Amelia Simmons's 1796 American Cookery. New England colonists, in spite of their puritanical reputation, were known to enjoy a tot of rum now and then. And if the liquor was hidden in a pie, even the ladies were able to indulge.

If you have an extra minute, garnish the pie with chocolate shavings and cookie halves.

Pumpkin is one of those tastes you either love or hate, so there is no point in half-measures. Its earthy flavor should not be overwhelmed by molasses or too much spice, particularly mace. If you’re a pumpkin lover, when you bite into a piece of pumpkin pie, you want to taste pumpkin. In this recipe, I cook the pumpkin and spices before baking, which makes for a more mellow and pleasing flavor. Puréeing the pumpkin in a food processor produces an unusually silky texture. The crunchy bottom crust is the result of creating a layer of gingersnaps and ground pecans to absorb any excess liquid from the filling, and also of baking the pie directly on the floor of the oven.

Kevin Prothal of Albany, New York, writes: "While we in upstate New York don't usually get a lot of press about our restaurants, we are still very well fed. I think the best place for any meal is McCarthy's Restaurant in Canton. The service is friendly, and the chocolate chip pie is, by itself, worth a trip up from New York City." This dessert is amazingly easy to prepare.

Shortbread cookie crust meets airy filling.

Rare is the serious restaurant-goer who ventures into an unfamiliar city without a copy of the local Zagat Survey. Tim and Nina Zagat published their first guide back in 1979, and since then, their burgundy pocket-size compendiums of consumer opinion have led millions to the best dining rooms in the world. Over the years, the Zagats have had hundreds of stunning restaurant desserts, but for Nina, nothing is as well remembered as her grandmother's apple pie. "She only believed in the basics: good apples, sugar, a squeeze of lemon," says Nina. "Even cinnamon was suspect. I used to bake the pies with her, and I loved to make sweet little things from the leftover pastry scraps. She baked the pies in a wood stove and they always came out perfectly." In honor of such grandmotherly comforts, here is a beautiful and delicious pie to serve with vanilla ice cream or slightly sweetened whipped cream.

The recipe for this delicious and speedy summer pie ws given to me by a food-writing colleague, Dede Ely-Singer. The filling requires no baking, is quick to prepare, and can be varied to suit whatever combination of berries and fruits is in season. The technique is simple: some of the fruit is first mashed and cooked into a thickened sauce. Then the remaining fresh fruit is stirred in and the entire mixture turned out into a completely prebaked pastry shell and chilled. The filling can also be served as a pudding without any pastry. Advance preparation: The pastry can be prebaked a day in advance. The filling should be made early in the day, and the pie filled and set to chill at least 3 hours before serving.