Vanilla Ice Cream with Sweet Apples Compote

Dateline: Wed 05 Aug. Was it only two weeks ago that on Amy’s regular dinner visit we indulged in a strange concoction for dessert? Why yes: homemade vanilla ice cream topped with a sweet apples compote, which was really an over-sauced stewed diced apples filling like one might use to stuff handpies with. But I overdid its runniness and had also just made ice cream and I thought: Why the heck not?

Dateline: Fri 07 Aug. A couple of days passed with that delicious runny apple filling in a storage container, and in the meantime, I’d also made pastry for a double-crust pie but only used the bottom crust. What remained in the fridge was the perfect amount of dough to create four well-filled apple hand pies, brushed with egg yolk and cream and coated with cinnamon sugar, baked to a toasty doneness, and consumed with another big scoop of that vanilla sweet milk ice cream.

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Based on "Sweet Milk Ice Cream," published in the King Arthur Flour catalogue some years ago, but the recipe is no longer available on their website.

Adapted from "Hand-Held Apple Pies," by Diana Rattray of TheSpruceEats.com. [Updated 10 September 2019]

Meal No. 4172: Pimento Cheese Tomato Pie

Dateline: Wed 05 Aug. It was starting to feel like summer menus were about to get away from me and I’d not made a good tomato pie in a while. So that became my mission, after stocking up on tomatoes on a recent run to the market. And what better occasion to serve this than when Amy was here for her mid-week drop-in? We decided that the crust was awesome, the tomatoes were terrific, the pimento cheese portion was inspired, and the mix of parmesan and panko on top was better than more crust. The extra basil and diced scallions weren’t bit players, either. The simplicity of canned green beans beside it all made it feel like a complete plate, even though it was clear what the star of the meal was.

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Pulled together and based partially on “Tomato Pie,” by Lauren Allen of Tastes Better from Scratch. [Updated 05 July 2022 ]

Based loosely on ”Quick Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic and Thyme," from Suzy Karadsheh of The Mediterranean Dish. [First Published in 2015 / Updated 11 September 2020]

"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese. [Published 23 October 2009]

”Cream Cheese Pie Crust," from Dan Langan of Baked by Dan. Originally found on Instagram. [Published 28 August 2024]

Lemon Meringue and Chocolate Meringue Pies

Dateline: Thu 02 July. It was double-duty for me on the first Thursday afternoon in July, when I let Pillsbury pie shells take some of the pressure off and then I compensated by making both a lemon meringue pie and chocolate meringue pie. They had time to chill a bit and then the chocolate version served as that evening’s dessert when Kristen and Mookie were over.

Additional Dateline: Sat 04 July. I saved the lemon meringue pie to bring out for dessert on the Fourth of July, though, because that was our big gathering of Roediger House regulars. I regretted that my approach to meringue left it shrunken and sweaty in the intervening days from making and baking to greeting and eating. But was it still a fine pie? In the sweetest mouth-puckering way possible, yes indeed.

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"Chocolate and Lemon Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

Derby Pie on Pride Day

Dateline: Sat 13 June. Downtown Winston-Salem was alive and colorful with tons of activity on the middle Saturday of the month. It was the featured day of the Pride parade and all the associated events. With temps still cooking into the low 90s, the enthusiasm of the crowds did not seem much diminished or stilled. The celebration at home, of course, for those of us who don't venture out a lot when there are so many comforts within, was in bringing out an old-fashioned derby pie after supper. Twenty years ago I was spending lots of time in Louisa County, VA, working with schools there. In the evenings, as I was warmly lodged with the superintendent and her husband, I'd pass the time recording recipes from their grand collection of cookbooks and such. That's where this one came from, and I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've made it. We decided it was pretty darned good, especially with just a bit of the remaining sweet milk vanilla ice cream I'd churned not long before.

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"Derby Pie," from Eugenia Bumpass. In Cuckoo Cooks from Gilboa Christian Church in Cuckoo, Virginia.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Dateline: Mon 01 June. Coming in at just about the most perfect I've ever made it, the dessert at the start of the month was the glorious traditional creamy lemon meringue pie. The lemon filling was truly airy and excellent but there was something uniquely pleasing about the way the meringue turned out. While the four of us might have been desirous of larger or additional portions, we also were wise enough to recognize when enough was enough. Boy howdy, was it ever good.

The next day, before I headed out for a few days of work in Richmond, the Goodyear Blimp flew over downtown. Here's the photo to record that uneventful event.

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"Lemon Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

Key Lime Pie Bars

Monday night's fine supper for the Shenandoah superintendents was not really complete until dessert was served. On that evening, I brought out the terrific key lime pie bars that are always so gladly received by guests, and that night offered no deviation from the norm. The Biscoff crust serves as a counterpunch to the tart-sweet lime filling, and the creamy stabilized sweetened whipped cream on top helps smooth it all out. The bar sizes were generous, perhaps, but that generated no discontent amongst the partakers.

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Adapted from "Key Lime Pie Bars," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 17 July 2023 / Modified 28 May 2024]

"Stabilized Whipped Cream," from Alyssa Rivers of TheRecipeCritic.com. [Published 02 November 2023]

Lemon Meringue Pie

As last week got started, I gave in to a multi-week hankering for a lemon meringue pie. Once more it was a store-bought Pillsbury crust but the filling and meringue were homemade—and heavenly.

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"Lemon Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

Chocolate Chess Pie

With this post, we will transport ourselves all the way back to the first day of spring, on Friday March 20th. That's when friend and fellow UNC alum Chris was back at the house for a visit and a bit of supper. We had chocolate chess pie for dessert, where I depended on a new recipe as well as store-bought crust (and I know I'm not getting any better at pie and pastry crust by avoiding practicing!). Dense and chocolatey, sweet and tempting, we all thought our pieces were too small...but too small also might have been the remaining vacancy in our well-sated bellies.

While I try to stay up to date with this blogging obsession, given that I've somehow had something to drivel and dribble about every single day since 2010, I do sometimes end up with a backlog of posts waiting in the queue. Sometimes that's because a lot has been going on and I do like the dependability of this forum for documentation (when did the dryer belt break? what was the recipe source I used when making...?). Sometimes it's because I know I have work travel coming up and the posts need to be ready to step into those empty slots where house shenanigans are concerned. All three regular readers of the blog are aware of this, of course, and they'll each in their own way acknowledge something they spotted on the blog, inadvertently feeding my compulsion to persist with these entries whether there's anything worth posting about at all. What it all leads to, of course, is a pie post about something from 8 days prior!

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"Chocolate Chess Pie," from Danielle Rye of LiveWellBakeOften.com. [Published 27 October 2022]

Meal No. 4042: Tomato & Corn Pie

After a good full week of work in southern Georgia and after belatedly letting it catch my eye that this past Friday the 13th was also National Cheddar Day, I satisfied a menu craving and honored that occasion with tomato and corn pie for supper. Because I'm bringing ideas from several recipes together, the result always seems to vary just a bit but I'm also almost always pleased. With the exception of how the pieces absolutely fell apart as I tried to serve each slice, making for an unsightly presentation, it was still all really tasty. My beloved roasted broccoli florets were there as well, plus a smattering of Caesar-topped spring mix.

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Pulled together and based on the following evolving recipe history:

• "Tomato Pie," from the Swamp Rabbit Café in Greenville, SC.
• "Tomato and Corn Pie," from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen. [Published 27 August 2009]
• "Tomato and Corn Pie," by Maggie Ruggiero in Gourmet, August 2009, p. 42-43. [Published Online 15 July 2009]
• "Quick Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic and Thyme," from Suzy Karadsheh of The Mediterranean Dish. [First Published in 2015 / Updated 11 September 2020]

Key Lime Pie Bars

It’s been on my radar for a while to produce a pan of key lime pie bars. Well: lime pie bars, at least, styled on par with how the official KLP is made. Persian limes take the place of Key limes (or the famous Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice); I sub out the graham cracker crust, opting instead for pulverized Biscoff cookies; and I prefer an enhanced stabilized whipped cream atop once it’s all set up first in the fridge. Sometimes I make too much of that whipped topping.

Also: you cannot ask someone whose nickname in 8th grade was “Mr. Precise” to successfully work with the determined imprecision of quality parchment paper that must be fitted into an 8x8 non-stick pan. It cannot be done and there is a price to be paid regarding mental health. But when it is time to cut and serve, and the whole of it has been freed from its bakeware, the unpanned brick of beauty does offer up much cleaner slices. Then again: I think there are plenty of YouTube and Instagram recipe bloggers who have made a million reels about how to cleverly snip and cut a sheet to properly slip into the pan. I guess I have some self-schooling to do.

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Adapted from "Key Lime Pie Bars," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 17 July 2023 / Modified 28 May 2024]

"Stabilized Whipped Cream," from Alyssa Rivers of TheRecipeCritic.com. [Published 02 November 2023]

Atlantic Beach Pie

A fun and festive dinner for four on Friday night of last week had a fine evening-ender: Atlantic Beach pie. This outstanding but surprisingly easy pie has been showing up here since I first came across a recipe for it just over a decade ago, but its roots go deep into family beach trips to the North Carolina coast and the typical dessert we'd have after some large platters of fried seafood. While I want to be clear that I fancy myself to have no magic in my chef's touch—that the key often seems to be in doing exactly what the recipe tells me—it seems to wash over guests like something out of this world. I'm right there with 'em.

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"One Phenomenal Pie: Atlantic Beach Pie," from Chef Bill Smith. Published in Our State Magazine, May 2014. Also featured in "Found Recipes" on All Things Considered from National Public Radio, broadcast April 13, 2013. First made in the RoHo: July 2014.

December Vacation Snacks and Sweets

This past holiday season was not wildly focused on sweets or fun foods, as I might have hoped, given the extra time at home. But that doesn't mean there weren't some goodies to please us while family gathered or friends were on hand. The earliest entry into that suite of treats was peanut butter fudge (pictured above), a pretty simple concoction that's worth breaking out the double-boiler for. It sets up nicely and brings out the peanut butter flavor in earnest measure. I also made a double-batch of pimento cheese (pictured below), using a recipe I came up with after reviewing a number of competitors. I've included a link (at the bottom of this post) to the recipe that was most impactful, if you feel like playing around a bit yourself.

I also made another kind of chocolate pie. You'd have to go all the way back to the winter of 2011 to find the first time I made Emeril Legasse's chocolate cream pie. It is a stunning concoction, not because it's particularly fancy, but because the simple alchemy behind it brings out the most marvelous heavenly slice of chocolatey goodness, almost light in feel but definitely well-massed in endorphin delights. It has made semi-regular appearances here over the last decade and a half, although it's been missing from the dessert rotation for over a year and a half.

Many a time it's been on the dessert menu here, I've shortcutted its prep by using store-bought chocolate crusts...but Nabisco discontinued that product. I don't love chocolate graham cracker crusts but my grocery stores don't seem to carry those either. Isn't it better to make one's own, though? That's definitely the route I took for that chocolate cream pie. It seemed to be well received when I served it on Christmas Eve after we'd had our fill of skillet pizzas.

I might as well throw in for good measure the way I used up the rest of a peasant bread loaf: a fine round of nighttime cinnamon toast. Well-buttered and then thickly sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar, these crunchy sweet delights were much more than I could handle on the evening when temptation compelled that I make them.

Finally, as the holidays were wrapping up, I wanted to send my brother-in-law back on the road with a bagful of white chocolate macadamia nut toffee cookies, given his fondness for them as road snacks. I had to sample a couple myself, as they came out of the oven the night before his Sunday morning departure, and I could attest most assuredly to the latest success with this new-found recipe. Gone so rapidly, and knowing only one possible solution: make another batch. That happened a couple of evenings later:

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"15-Minute Peanut Butter Fudge," in the article "Simplifying Fudge" by David Pazmiño. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2007, p. 22-23.

"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese. [Published 23 October 2009]

"Emeril's Chocolate Cream Pie," by Emeril Lagasse (2007). Featured on The FoodNetwork.com website.

"Perfect Oreo Cookie Crust," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 11 November 2022]

Adapted from "THE BEST White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 19 February 2025 / Updated 11 October 2025]

Chocolate Meringue Pie

Lordy: I am a weak man when placed before me is a warm slice of chocolate meringue pie. An enduring favorite, etched deep into glorious memories from my youth, and particularly imprinted in connection to family treks to the Meadow Restaurant in neighboring Johnston County, the simple beauty of this sweet concoction is always irresistible and therefore its appearances must be carefully spaced out at the Roediger House. But it was the Christmas season, and I was in a joyful mood, and I'd made a pie shell whose future was undetermined. At least: undetermined until the thought of chocolate meringue pie occurred to me and then there was no other thought or action possible. It was ready to serve the Friday before Christmas, sort of an early present to myself.

One of these days, I'm going to get much more consistent at really reading the recipes I'm trying to follow. Or, maybe I'll have to start relying on just one at the time instead of bouncing back and forth between different recipes for the same item. This chocolate meringue pie ended up with an extremely thick and chewy crust because—of course!—I was bouncing between recipes for one-crust pies and two-crust pies...and thought I was making a single when it should have been for two pie shells. The worst mistake I've ever made in my kitchen? Not by a long shot.

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"Chocolate Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

"Buttery, Flaky Pie Crust," by Stella Parks, editor emeritus and former Pastry Wizard at SeriousEats.com, and the current reigning monarch of Bravetart. [Printed 14 December 2021 / Updated 20 September 2025]

Buttermilk-Lemon Chess Pie

When we hosted a boys' night on Thursday of last week, I also managed a dessert for the occasion: buttermilk-lemon chess pie, with a homemade buttermilk crust. I made it the night before and it had a chance to rest and set up before serving after we'd let our dinners settle a bit. This was a different recipe for me, as I continue attempting this dessert from time to time and with mixed results.

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"Buttermilk-Lemon Chess Pie," from Billy Reid. Featured in "Friends, Family, & Tradition Way Down South," by John Currence. In Bon Appétit, November 2011, p. 125.

Thanksgiving Espresso Chocolate Pecan Pie

Last Friday's Thanksgiving meal for our tidy crew of eight ended on a dessert note, with espresso chocolate pecan pie the featured player. Wonderfully fudgy, it was at the same time a seductive sticky stiff goo, interspersed with pecan pieces, nestled into a crisp pastry crust and cut into portions that exceeded the small areas of torso vacancy left following the Thanksgiving spread. We gave it our best shot, and the steely resolve of most diners produced victory, which roughly translates into unbridled excess and several shakes of self-satisfaction together with tight-belted discomfort.

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Adapted from "Espresso Chocolate Pecan Pie," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 02 November 2023 / Modified 21 November 2025]

Key Lime Pie Bars

The happy occasion of a full dinner table Sunday a week ago ended on a pleasant sweet note with squares of key lime pie bars. This is a newer addition to the dessert stable, but a welcome find. I prefer a Biscoff cookie crust instead of graham crackers, and the filling has an enticing lime punch. A decent top layer of stabilized sweetened whipped cream tames the tang. Those squares were not spared from the ferocious forks that attacked them.

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Adapted from "Key Lime Pie Bars," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 17 July 2023 / Modified 28 May 2024]

Sour Orange Pie

The rules I made up for provoking recipe magazine exploration, using multi-sided dice to randomly compel trying something new, would normally require me to make just one recipe from the chosen issue...but as long as a 2017 Cook's Country was on the counter, I had to satisfy the urge to bring out another tasty possibility. This past Monday's gathering of the crew for Labor Day was just the avenue to see what we thought of sour orange pie. It is essentially a key lime pie (graham cracker crust) or an Atlantic Beach pie (the lemon version of key lime with a Ritz crust!) but with a definite leaning toward Meyer lemons because it combines orange and lemon flavors—on an animal cracker crust. I doubt I would ever prefer it over our treasured Atlantic Beach pie but I'm glad I gave it a go.

And once more that evening, Sumner found his happy place at the feet of all these folks he loves, while lightly tapped those dessert forks on the china above him.

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"Sour Orange Pie," by Katie Leaird. In Cook's Country, February/March 2017, p. 17.

Super Awesome Eggnog Ice Cream

While the weather last week was making me feel pretty blah, I still found something to celebrate: the deliciousness of a fresh batch of homemade eggnog ice cream (no actual eggnog was harmed in the making of this treasure!). The base was made last Tuesday, and the ice cream got its churning Wednesday morning, and then it was put away to set up in the freezer to be ready to serve after dinner on Friday night. And it wasn't alone: I also whipped up a chai-spiced sweet cream cheese and apple strudel, and they were a fine pairing!

Also, best I can tell from the blog, it's been almost three years since I made eggnog ice cream, and it's been almost four years since I used this particular recipe...in spite of how good it is!

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"Eggnog Ice Cream," from Bi-Rite Creamery's Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones, by Kris Hoogerhyde, Anne Walker, and Dabney Gough. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2012), p. 186-187.

Based on "Easy Apple Strudel with Puff Pastry," from Hyegyoung "Holly" K. Ford of BeyondKimchee.com. [Published 15 September 2021 / Updated 29 October 2023]

Apple Filling based on "Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]

Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]

Lemon Meringue Pie

Last Saturday's boys' night involved fried chicken sandwiches, three movies, and a dessert of lemon meringue pie. This recipe, that I came across quite a long time ago, really is just about perfect just about every time. Usually I try to savor desserts like this, but I inhaled my slice.

I'll confess that it turned out to be so pleasing that I turned right around and made another one the following Tuesday night, when fellow UNC alum Chris came for dinner. While the crust did not behave as well as I'd've liked, it was still a fine pie.

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"Lemon Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

Meal No. 3901: Bacon & Caramelized Onion Quiche

After two days up in Virginia for a math conference, I was so happy to make an early afternoon return to Winston-Salem last Wednesday. As it got closer to dinnertime, knowing we'd be enjoying another delightful evening with Amy here, I finally decided we should have a bacon and caramlized onion quiche, in a homemade pie crust. On the side, we had some roasted herbed very thin asparagus spears. I still have a long way to go in being proficient with pie crusts, I know, but we still seemed to find it tasty enough for a weeknight!

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Recipe based on "Bacon and Caramelized Onion Quiche," from Mountain Mama Cooks.

"Pie Crust Recipe," from Sam Merritt of SugarSpunRun.com. [Published 08 November 2021 / Updated 14 November 2023 ]