"crack pie" news and stories

• This Valentine's Day, instead of the same old box of chocolates, consider crack -- Crack Pie, that is.
• Or, in honor of Chinese New Year, use these DIY instructions to make dumplings for your dumpling.
• Il Dolce in Costa Mesa isn't just a pizza joint -- but it's the main reason you'll want to go. And you will want to go.
• At Hayat's Kitchen in North Hollywood, the garlic fries are so intense, "you might be able to use [them] to revive the recently deceased." Enough said!
• The trend in planting tea gardens gives new meaning to "growing your own."

Slashfood has long been a fan of Momofuku Milk Bar's Crack Pie, and it seems we're in good company.

Anderson Cooper confessed Tuesday during a guest host spot on "Live with Regis and Kelly" that he and his famous mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, can't get enough of Christina Tosi's Crack Pie.

"They have a pie that's called crack pie that is literally crack," Cooper said. "There is crack in that pie because once you have that pie, you can think of nothing else but having more of that crack pie."

Well there's not exactly crack in there. Tosi's recipe calls for butter, heavy cream and sugar. Lots of it.

"I sent it to my mom," Cooper said. "My mom's now addicted to crack -- pie. And uh, yeah, seriously, my teeth are going to fall out. It's like doing crack. After a while of doing it your teeth will fall out."

To which, Kelly Ripa quipped, "crack pie is whack."

To drive home just how much he loves the pie, he brought the studio audience samples on Wednesday's show.

Cooper's also a fan of Milk Bar's Compost cookie. "It's the best cookie I've ever had."

UPDATE: Now you can order Crack Pie and Compost Cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar online.

[Via Serious Eats]

We can't swear to it, but we suspect that this Momofuku Milk Bar Volcano was sent here from Planet Chang either to teach us or to enslave us. We can't be certain of its purpose, but what we do know is that all the breakfast food bravado we've flaunted up to this point -- Brooklyn deli egg and cheese bombs, full-on Irish black and white pudding spreads, Meatnormous® BK sammies and half-sow Bellagio Buffet crepes laid waste to in short order -- meant diddly squat as we stood at the Volcano's lip and by God, were afraid.

Chef David Chang's co-conspiritor Christina Tosi works the sweet end of the Momofuku Ssam Bar's East Village space at Milk Bar, turning out scrumdiddilyumtious sun-dense cornflake-chocolate chip cookies, dentist-scoffing Crack Pie and soft-serve cereal milk ice creams by the bucketload. We thought we had her all figured out, and there she had to go tossing out double-dog-dare words like "savory" and "volcano." Dang.

Turns out the steaming, softball-sized item is essentially a knish stuffed to rumbling with potato gratin, Gruyere, Benton's bacon, caramelized onions and a good 20 or so minutes off the average human's lifespan. No worries -- contrary to today's New York Times' $25 and Under assessment, we found its hefty, tangy slather of Mornay sauce to be more than adequate compensation for the latter.

We're not ashamed to admit that we were bested and could not conquer the Volcano in one sitting, or even without assistance from concerned colleagues, but we learned and we grew as people (or perhaps that last part was just our thighs.)

No matter. What we'd like to know is this -- how much can you manage to chow down in the morning? Are you after daybreak fare that sticks to your ribs or does coffee alone keep you fueled until lunchtime? Take the poll, and as always, comment away.