As Easy As Pie by Dylan Hebert

After Graduating with an associate’s degree in Baking and Pastry Arts, I intend to pursue a bachelor’ degree in food service management. I hope to one day, own a pastry shop and creates some original recipes.

Assorted Tartlettes. Apple frangipane (top), Almondine (right), Fruit (bottom), and Chocolate (left). Out of all four of these tartlettes the fruit one is my favorite by far. The pastry cream beneath the fruit was smooth and creamy but not too sweet as to overpower the fruit. My chocolate ganache needed to be hotter when it was poured into the pre-baked shell. I didn’t have any issues with either almond tart, other than personal preference against almond cream.

Linzer torte. A pastry made with a hazelnut crust, a layer of almond cream, raspberry jam, and topped with a diamond shaped crust and slivered almonds. The classic linzer torte has small balls of crust around the edge in place of the almonds. Overall I liked the torte, but personally I would have preferred it without the almond cream.

Derby pie tarts! These are a spin off of a classic pecan pie by adding chocolate into the mix! Just be sure to garnish with some of that chocolate to show off what’s inside.This was my first experience with a pecan or derby pie and i was not disappointed. I love the gooey texture from the syrup combined with the crunch from the pecans.

Butternut squash pie. For this pie we used a classic pumpkin pie recipe and substituted fresh butternut squash for the pumpkin puree. You can make fresh puree from any squash by roasting it until it softens, and then simply pureeing it. I like the sleight change in flavor from a typical pumpkin pie, as well as learning how to make use of fresh squash.

Peanut butter cream pie (left) and a lemon chiffon pie (right). Both pies have a thin layer of chocolate between the crust and the filling. I really enjoyed making (and eating) these pies, although I felt that the peanut butter pie needed a little more saltiness in the filling.

Cherry pie (top) made with the cooked juice method and apple pie (bottom) made with the cooked fruit and juice method. These methods use cornstarch as a thickening agent, as a result the filling needs to be boiled before filling the crust. I really enjoyed the apple pie because the apples were cooked but still firm. The dough used to make these pies was relatively easy to work with.

Home-style apple pie with a basic pie dough crust. In this style of pie the filling is thickened by a small amount of flour added to the fruit before being added to the unbaked pie shell. This is my personal favorite way to make most fruit pies because it is fast, easy, and doesn’t require memorizing a formula. While I was rolling out the dough for the top crust, I rolled it just a little too thin but fixed it by covering the top with cutouts.