And lead me not into temptation...

I do that well enough on my own. I made 2 homemade pies, cheesecake, and it was my friend's birthday with a high-end bakery's cake. I missed it all. Yeay me! There were times I was ready to throw in the towel. My husband is convinced that as long as I don't actually EAT it (i.e. chow down), I can try sample my own creations. I prefer to not even go down the path.
The crust for both pies was from Ina Garten. It was so simple - all the ingredients went in the food processor. A spin later and it gets saran-wrapped and in the fridge. I didn't get around to it for two days, and I thought I'd put too much water, but it was perfect. I do need to blind-bake next time. She also has a more savory crust that is built the same way.
The filling for the apple was Emeril's Big Apple pie, sans nuts. Hee hee. That sounds funny. It got great reviews, but it came out really watery. Again, I probably need to blind bake, as my friend's came out not so watery and she used a frozen crust. It also made a LOT of filling. Scale back, use a really deep pan, or make two pies. DH has yet to try it either pie.
We also made a strawberry rhubarb pie. I plan on buying some more rhubarb while it's in season. I realize now that I followed a different recipe than I originally intended to, Smitten Kitchen's. Everyone liked it though, except Mija. It was also watery, gotta work on that when I can taste it. We used the struesel topping from this recipe on both pies, adding oats to the apple topping.
I forgot momentarily that I couldn't eat sweets. We were waiting for the cake slicing at my friend & her twin's celebration. (Some drama was going on, and a bday girl was lost.) This entire time, I was waiting for cake. It wasn't until everyone was found and in place for slicing and the song was sung that it dawned on me, "I can't eat cake." Darnit. That carrot cake looked so good. . .almost there!