That's when we started baking pie shells and washing the berries.

The Second Law of Pies: they must be baked, not fried (or boiled, or steamed).

Baking is like washing--the results are equally temporary.

I've been a member for 40 years, but I don't remember when we started baking the cookies.

She savors each bite: the meringue is perfect crispy brown on top, melts in the mouth; the lemon tart, custardy; the crust breaks away.

The next day, Angelina was tending a fresh pot of red gravy on the stove. She was going to make Veal Parmigiana for dinner, to be accompanied by pasta, fresh bread, and salad. She left the sauce on low and went to put the finishing touches on the pie she had planned. Earlier, she had made 'a vol-au-vent'- the word means "windblown" in French- a pastry that was as light and feathery as a summer breeze, that Angelina had adapted to serve as a fluffy, delicately crispy pie crust.
The crust had cooled and formed a burnished auburn crown around the rim of the pie plate. She took a bowl of custardy creme anglaise out of the refrigerator and began loading it into a pie-filling gadget that looked like a big plastic syringe. With it, she then injected copious amounts of the glossy creme into the interior of the pie without disturbing the perfect, golden-crusty dome. That done, she heated the chocolate and cream on the stove top to create a chocolate ganache, which she would use as icing on the pie, just to take it completely over the top.