For reasons I will never fully understand, the only part of pie-making that anyone tries to hack is by far the easiest. Mixing pastry dough could not be simpler; all you’re doing is barely binding cold fat and flour together with a little water. It is not a process that needs hacking.

Making pastry in hotter environments means fighting an uphill battle against the laws of thermodynamics. Even when you’ve taken every possible precaution to keep your ingredients — and your tools — nice and cold, dough is still liable to melt the second it hits your counter.

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.