Chess pie is a dessert that doesn’t give anything away in its name. It’s a Southern classic pie with a custard base made up of eggs, butter and sugar. So far as I can tell, there is no one standard version of the chess pie and I’ve had many variations of it before, some that had a very dense, sweet, eggy filling and some that were more like a classic custard. The flavors have ranged from vanilla to chocolate to citrus. One of my favorites is a lemon chess pie. The way I make it, the pie has a lemon curd-like filling that is similar to that of a lemon bar, with a thin cake-like layer on top.

This pie only requires a few ingredients, so it’s important that you don’t skip out on using fresh lemon juice in your filling. It will definitely give you the best flavor, plus it will provide plenty of zest for making the filling bright and citrusy. There is a little bit of flour in the filling that will help form the sponge cake layer on the top of the cake. This top layer gives the pie a beautiful golden brown finish and adds a little substance to the pie. The filling itself is very light and smooth, with a lovely lemon flavor that is sure to be a hit with citrus-lovers.

I like a graham cracker pie crust for this particular pie. They’re easy and provide a nice crisp contrast to the silky pie filling, as well as adding a little extra flavor to each bite. You could certainly use a regular pie crust as long as you blind-bake it and let it cool before adding the filling (a totally uncooked crust won’t be cooked through with this filling, so the crust must be par-baked if using pie dough).

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When it comes to pie crusts, I am a firm believer in making my own when I can. They’re really not that difficult to make by hand, and you can also blend the dough in a food processor. The more you practice, the better you’ll get - and you also have a great excuse to bake more pies this way. Still, there are plenty of times when a premade pie crust can come in handy. I really like using premade graham cracker crusts for convenience and I’ve had some success with frozen pie dough, although homemade tends to taste better. I decided to give Trader Joe’s Frozen Pie Crusts a try because they’re made with real butter and I hoped that the finished product would have a good flavor.

These pie crusts come two in a package in the frozen foods section. They’re flat, so you’ll need your own pie plate to fit them two. You simply defrost the crusts, transfer them to your pie plate and bake as you would with homemade crust. Do not defrost them all the way to room temperature or they’ll be too soft to handle; aim for a chilled but flexible texture with these crusts. These will definitely not fit in a deep dish pie plate, as they just barely fill a regular 9-inch plate. You can roll them out slightly if you want more of a crust overhang on the edge of your pie, but that kind of defeats the purpose of using a ready-made crust.

After baking, I was really pleased with the flavor of the crust. It was light and had a nice butter flavor to it. I noticed that it was a tiny bit saltier than my usual crusts, but that is not necessarily a bad thing since most pie fillings are nice and sweet to start with. So, I’d have to say that these are a good, flavorful bet as far as ready-made crusts go, although they’re not as easy to use as pie crusts that come already shaped to a pie plate and do require prep time because they must be defrosted before using. The packaging doesn’t take up much room, however, so this might be just the thing to keep in your freezer as a backup when you just don’t want to do it yourself.

I don’t know about you, but I recently realized that I have quite the cookbook collection going on here. Unlike stamps or trading cards, people rarely start out to build a cookbook collection. Instead, they grow over time as you add a book here and there, take up a new type of cooking or baking, or browse through used bookstores until you find an old, forgotten gem. Like stamps and trading cards, however, everything that you can collect has some value attached to it. I flipped through a copy of the Antique Trader Collectible Cookbooks Price Guide to see if my out of control collection of cookbooks had any value besides their wealth of recipes.

It turns out that some of my oldest cookbooks, while they’ve risen from their sticker price or $2 of $4, aren’t worth all that much. Many of my newest cookbooks have sticker prices (and current values) much higher! My theory is that cookbooks are things that are kept for years, and passed along to friends and relatives. They’re not often sold, lost or destroyed (although spills in the kitchen will damage more than a few). So while my 1960 copy of Peg Bracken’s The I Hate To Cook Book is worth a lot to me, it’s not worth a whole lot on the market because there are plenty of other copies out there.

Most of the cookbooks listed in the Price Guide topped out at $20-$40, even for the very old cookbooks or small-run promotional books. Needless to say, I’m keeping my books for their content and for inspiration even when I don’t use their recipes. Does anyone else have older cookbooks that might be worth more than their recipes? Anyone else have older cookbooks, like me, that you couldn’t put a price tag on easily because the recipes are worth even more?

Fans of the Girl Scout’s Do-si-do cookies, also known as Peanut Butter Sandwiches, will notice some similarities between them and these  Toffee Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies. They look similar and both have a great peanut butter flavor to them. The signature element of those cookies is their light, crisp texture. These are chewier, making them a little more substantial, and I think they have an even better peanut butter flavor.

These peanut butter cookies have two ingredients that set them apart from your average peanut butter cookie: oatmeal and toffee. A little bit of quick cooking oatmeal in the cookie dough helps these cookies to bake up to be slightly thinner than your average peanut butter cookie, as well as a bit more tender. It also gives them a little bit of extra flavor. The toffee contributes a lot of flavor as well. Because it is finely chopped before being incorporated, it really almost melts into the cookies. When fresh from the oven, these cookies are tender and crisp around the edges, with a chewy center.

I sandwiched the cookies together with creamy peanut butter. The end result is a great combination of salty and sweet. That said, I must admit that the cookies are good on their own even without the filling!

These cookies are done when their edges start to turn golden brown. It may be tempting to overbake these cookies because they will look a little bit pale in the center when they’re golden on the edge, but overbaking them will only take away their chewiness.

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• Croissants, brioche and other french pastries are a good way to start off the morning, but one of my other favorite breakfast pastries is the Pastelito. Pastelitos are Cuban pastries that have a guava and cheese filling. 5 Star Foodie made a batch of Pastelitos at home, starting with a layer of puff pastry and filling it with a mixture of cream cheese and guava jelly. Guava paste is traditionally used in these pastries, but it is more difficult to find in stores than guava jelly. A quick brush of an egg glaze and sugar syrup for extra sweetness, and these pastries come out of the oven looking like something you’d find at a good Cuban bakery.
• Hamantaschen are cookies traditionally made for the Jewish holiday of Purim. As a holiday cookie, they’re one of those treats that people don’t usually make at home, but are much better when made at home rather than being store-bought.Simply Sifted starts these a batch of these cookies off with a simple dough that is flavored with orange zest. Any kind of fruit filling or jam can be used to add a splash of flavor and color to the center of the cookies, which are rolled out and then folded up into triangular hat shapes before baking.
• Natalie’s Killer Cuisine’s Salted Cashew Cookies with Homemade Dulce de Leche are a twist on peanut butter cookies. They start off with whole, roasted cashews, which need to be processed in a food processor (with a little bit of peanut oil) until very smooth and creamy. The nut butter then goes right into a cookie dough, along with brown sugar, butter, vanilla and a few cashew bits for crunch. The cookies are finished with a little sprinkle of sea salt, which makes then a good match for the creamy dulce de leche spread that sandwiches them together.
• Dense, decadent and rich all describe the Vintage Butterscotch Bars from Culinary in the Country. These easy to make bars are a type of blondies, as their chewy and almost fudgy texture does make you think of brownies, even though there is no chocolate in these. The bars get their flavor from a very generous amount of brown sugar. To stop these bars from being too sweet, CitC mixed in some chopped walnuts, but cutting them up into bite-sized pieces will let you savor their flavor without being overwhelmed by butterscotch, too.
• Cookies and Cups has been experimenting with making Homemade Kit Kats. These layered bars aren’t really exactly like the candy bars for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which being that they’re quite large. Still, the flavors are there and with good quality ingredients you’re going to get a treat that will taste better than the “real” thing. The bars start with a lyaer of salted club crackers, which are topped with a graham cracker-containing caramel. Another layer of crackers and caramel comes before the final crisp layer of crackers and finishing layer a rich chocolate peanut butter mixture.

Popsicle-style cake pans - or pans that make small, flat cakes that can easily be skewered with a popsicle stick for a whimsical presentation of a cupcake - seem to be popping up all over the place lately. I’ve seen heart-shaped caksicles in addition to the classic popsicle-shaped Caksicle. The G&S Design Lollipop Cake Pan is a new spring-themed pan of the same type. The pan features three daisy-shaped cavities, three tulips and two butterflies, for a total of eight cake molds per pan. The pans are nonstick, for an easy release, and have just enough detail that the finished cakes will have a nice shape without too many nooks and crannies for the cake batter to get stuck in during baking. You can bake cake batter in these molds, but can also use them to shape cookie dough or even plain chocolate. The designs can be enjoyed year round, but really are perfect for spring and summer use.

Each pan includes a number of popsicle sticks so you’ll be ready to bake right away. Cookies, shortbread and other dense baked goods hold up well to the popsicle concept. For lighter or more delicate cakes (most, in my experience), the best way to serve these is by pairing up the shapes and sandwiching them together with frosting, inserting the stick and then dipping everything into a glaze (or melted chocolate) to coat the popsicle and keep hold everything in place.