Any day can be Doughnut Day if you try hard enough. Honestly though, I love any opportunity to talk about doughnuts, and would like to use this holiday to bring awareness to my favourite summer dessert: grilled doughnuts.

Baked custards are everywhere on the holiday dessert table. Apart from apple pie, just about every other holiday classic calls for baking a sugar-and-egg slurry until perfectly set. It seems simple enough, but custard pies are notoriously tricky — especially when canned pumpkin gets involved.

If you are a maker of pastry you probably have, at one point of another, lovingly brushed some buttery dough with a beaten egg, or some portion of an egg, never stopping to wonder why. (Or maybe you did wonder why. I’m not in your brain box.)

Pie is one of those things that some people just have a knack for. I am not so blessed. For those like me, there's a lot of stress surrounding the dessert, and these people should embrace galette.

Though I like to bake, I don't consider myself a "serious baker". Sure, I make my own pie crust and can bake a pretty decent loaf of bread, but one thing I have wanted to mess with is puff pastry.

No one needs an "excuse" to eat pie -- pie should be eaten freely and with joy whenever the craving strikes -- but yesterday was Pi Day (? Day), and we would be remiss if we didn't celebrate.