A light lunch will be served after the workshop.

With summer slipping away, the temperature dropping, and the humidity breaking, the idea of turning on our ovens suddenly seems attractive again. And while peaches, plums, and berries are disappearing with the fading summer, the apple-sometimes called the king of fruits-is coming into its own. Put together apple + oven, and you get any number of scrumptious, comforting, home-and-hearth desserts, several of which Carole Walter will demonstrate for us in this autumn apple workshop.

As the author of two critically acclaimed baking books, Great Pies & Tarts and the James Beard Award-winning Great Cakes, Walter is the ideal guide for our workshop. No less a culinary personage than Jacques Pépin has called her "a credit to her craft." As a baker and teacher, she is known for her accessibility, her precision, and her "downright common sense," as fellow baker Nick Malgieri put it. Walter has been polishing her baking skills her entire life. "I can remember being three years old and sitting on my grandmother's kitchen table watching her bake," she once told an interviewer. "I was so fascinated by the chemistry of it. If I could have crawled into her oven, I would have, so that I could see what makes things rise." Over the years, she has shared the fruits of her labor-literally and figuratively-with hundreds of students at cooking schools around New York.

In Great Pies & Tarts, her most recent tome (and it really is a tome; the volume runs 528 pages), Walter's students will master the perfect pâte brisée and weep-free meringue, as well as learning to prepare such signature creations as chocolate ripple ricotta tart and the "aptly named" "Sinfully Rich Pecan Pastry" featured in a Saveur review of the cookbook. In that article, Catherine Tillman praised the range of recipes, writing "with so many possibilities, creativity is irresistible." We think you'll find the prospect of Walter guiding you through your own apple creations irresistible, too.