[light bouncy music] My friend Camille Cogswell made a name for herself early in her career as an award-winning pastry chef.

But these days she's back home in the charming western North Carolina town of Marshall, where she's opening her own signature business, the Walnut Family Bakery.

Today, I get to help her whip up a clever honey-based dessert she calls a cake pie.

Well, good morning, my friend.

Thank you so much for having me over.

You told me a little bit about what we're gonna make.

- This is honey cake pie.

- Honey cake pie, I love it.

I'm really excited that you're gonna show me how you make your crust.

- What I like to do for my crust, I use a food processor, but what I do is I've got my flour here.

And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put about two thirds of it into the food processor first.

And then I've got my larger mixing bowl over here that we're gonna incorporate the water in after we've incorporated the butter by food processor.

So I'm just gonna dump the excess, the rest of that third of flour into this large bowl.

I've got a little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar here as well.

- And we've got lots and lots of butter in those little cube.

- I'm gonna cover it here real quick just so that it doesn't go everywhere.

So we're gonna take this, and we're just gonna dump it in here.

And you can see we're just tossing everything together here.

And then I'm gonna add probably about a third to half of my water to start.

And then what I do is I kind of do a few different types of motions.

What I do in general is, because it gets kind of crumbly here, I just do it in the bowl right here.

I'm just gonna push it all together.

I just go ahead and turn it right over like this.

It's a little bit more.

- You showed that dough who's boss.

- Yeah, exactly.

Now we can just completely wrap this up.

- [Sheri] Let's roll one out.

- Perfect.

- After that one's chilled.

- So I do have a little bit of flour here for rolling.

- The same flour we used.

- Exactly.

We're gonna try and use as little as possible.

I'm gonna put a lot of pressure down, but I'm gonna put even pressure in and out here.

And then as I go along, get a little ways there.

If you keep turning it a little bit as you go, you're gonna get that nice round shape.

Look at this.

- That's amazing.

That is such a good visual cue.

- Don't be scared of trying to transfer it.

One thing that can be helpful is just folding this in half, put it into the pan like this, you put it halfway over, and then unfold it.

So I'm gonna just press down into that corner as I go around.

- [Sheri] That's a great idea.

- What I also do is I will just take these scissors here, and I'm gonna just trim off a little bit of this excess.

And then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to fold under.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- So you can use all kinds of things to create a pattern on your crust.

- You're snipping.

- [Camille] I'm just gonna snip in diagonals like this.

- So the filling, honey cake pie.

Is this cake batter?

- It is.

We are just making a cake batter and baking it inside of a pie crust.

- I love it.

- We do have our flour here.

- Okay.

- I'm gonna add baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

One you might not find as often but coriander.

Cinnamon and nutmeg.

So we've got all these dry ingredients in here.

I'm just gonna give 'em a little whisk just to get 'em all incorporated.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- All right, and now we'll combine our wet ingredients.

So star of the show, honey.

Olive oil.

We've got some vanilla extract.

- [Sheri] Because vanilla makes everything taste more like itself.

- This is Rooibois tea.

- [Sheri] Oh wow.

- And then I am gonna put the sugar in with the wet ingredients too, just to help it dissolve a little bit.

- Sugar is a wet ingredient.

If you think about that, in most cakes, it always goes, and it's 'cause of how it melts.

- Now I'll just add these eggs.

Two eggs here.

And then I'm just gonna incorporate this.

And we are gonna add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in this case.

I'm just gonna add a little bit of it and kind of make like a nice smooth paste here.

Mix this all in.

And we have this blind-baked pie shell all ready here, and it's fully cooled.

Okay, now I'm just pouring all this filling into this crust.

- And so it's gonna go back in the oven, and this bakes until it's set?

- Yeah.

- To the oven.

- Okay.

- Look at this beautiful cooled pie.

I mean, it's so smooth.

It's cake, it's got your great crust, and so forth.

So these pears, I love what you've done here.

This is so easy.

It's just honey and a little bit of liquid and good fruit.

What happens next?

- So we've got these lovely pears in this lovely syrup.

We're going to arrange the pears on top of the pie, and then we're not gonna waste that syrup either.

We're going to, when we slice this pie up, we're gonna drizzle this honey syrup all over.

- But the aroma of that coming out, I mean, it's such a great use of honey.

And look at how these look with the little ruffled edges.

- Isn't that sweet?

- That is just spectacular.

That is wonderful.

So I believe that it's time to taste this pie.

Would you look at this?

It cuts like a dream.

It's perfect.

You can see your layers of that flaky crust, and the cake is just set, your glossy, beautiful pears on top.

Looks like a little cream, little drizzle.

Look at this.

- You know, one mark, I think, of a good pie and pie crust is that you should be able to just pick it up.

So I'm just gonna take the pie like this.

- Oh, I wish you told me that two seconds ago.

We'll do both, we'll make sure.

Proof is in both puddings here.

Oh honey.

[Sheri laughs] That cake is so tender, that spice coming out, the honeys and all these different levels.

But that crust, it comes back to it.

I don't think honey's ever wound up in a better place.

I've learned so much from you.

I mean, good cooks teach each other about how to do all this, how to rethink honey.

This has been such a good day.

And now we're having pie.

- I find that that's my favorite part of making pie is sharing pie.

- You know why?

Because pie is love.

- Always.

- Always.

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