The post 25 Potluck Dishes That Feed a Crowd, Travel Well, and Always Come Back With Empty Pans and Compliments appeared ...

Use a glass pie plate and a baking sheet to help a filled, unbaked pie shell brown on the bottom. Some pie fillings, such as pumpkin and other wet, eggy fillings, go into an unbaked pie shell.

Remove from the oven. Remove top pie dish and parchment paper. Add berry mixture. Evenly cover berries with 16 ounces of crumb streusel topping. Place pie pan on cookie sheet to catch any overflow.

Instead of using pie weights or filling a shell with beans, Serratore covers an unbaked shell with used butter wrappers or parchment paper, topped by an empty pie plate.

Sometimes my brain is as empty and deflated as a balloon. Take, for example, last week. November and December loomed ahead and I rolled around some ideas for the upcoming holidays.

Most pie recipes call for enough filling to fit in a deep dish, but if you’re worried it’s looking skimpy, up the fruit filling by 50 percent, mounding it on top like a fruit mountain.