Eli's Cheesecake Factory

Champagne cheesecake, cookie-crazy cheesecake, the Neapolitan Cheesecake Tower - these genius ideas happen at Eli's Cheesecake Factory in Chicago, thanks to lab-coated women with mixers and big bowls of butter. Take the factory tour (1pm Monday through Friday; $3 per person), and you'll get backstage access to their methods, plus see Willy Wonka-esque vats of chocolate and caramel squirt onto the swift-moving production line.

Eli's uses 10,000 lbs of cream cheese, 3000 lbs of sour cream and 2000 eggs each day to make the goods. The tour includes a free slice, and one lucky winner (chosen by random drawing) gets to take home a whole cake. Even if you don't triumph, the attached shop sells "imperfect" wares for big discounts - think $8 for 9-inch cheesecakes.

Heroic Pie at Hoosier Mama

"Pie is the American synonym of prosperity, and its varying contents the calendar of the changing seasons. Pie is the food of the heroic. No pie-eating people can ever be permanently vanquished."

So said a New York Times editorial in 1902. And so says Paula Haney, owner of Hoosier Mama Pie Co., who opens her new pie shop tomorrow in West Town (and who features the quote on her website). She's opening on 3-14, like 3.14, which is pi. Get it?

As a former pastry chef at Trio, Haney knows her stuff. She hand-rolls and crimps her dough, then plumps it with apples, pumpkin, banana cream, and more. She also bakes Southern-style chess pies in flavors like chocolate and lemon.

Remember the earlier blog post saying 1 out of 5 people have eaten an entire pie solo? This is your place to do it. Because it's heroic.

Hoosier Mama is located at 1618 1/2 W. Chicago Ave. She's open Monday and Wednesday-Friday 8am-7pm, and Saturday 9am-5pm (closed Tue. and Sun.).

Springtime for Sherman's

When daffodils shoot up green stems, and baseball talk trickles onto the airwaves - spring is coming, they say. But when Sherman's Dairy Bar flings open its doors at the beginning of March and starts scooping Mackinac Island Fudge, Chocolate Cake Batter and 47 other flavors, it means spring has arrived.

The South Haven, Mich., institution has been whipping up ice cream in the attached factory for more than 50 years. Lines snake out the door on most days, as well-muscled scoopers plop meal-sized portions atop "baby" cones. The top seller, according to our dipping boy? Vanilla. Followed by Butter Pecan.

You won't regret the two-hour drive from Chicago.

Donut Diaries, Entry #2

"Donuts return the magic of your childhood and take away the disappointment of your adulthood," said baker Kirsten Anderson in a recent Sun Times article.

True, we thought, and after a failed attempt to get Cubs tickets on the first day of sales, we decided to put Ms. Anderson's words to the test. Could her $3 mint chocolate donut cure our Cubbie blues?

Anderson crafts her wares with soy vegetable oil, forgoes eggs and butter, and sweetens with cane juice. Quirky flavors include pistachio with cardamom and lavender, orange spice with nutmeg and clove, and the aforementioned mint chocolate (with real sprigs of mint baked on top). Anderson hand rolls each cakey treat, so output is limited - only seven dozen donuts per week, popped out of the fryer on Fridays. Grab 'em at Bite Cafe's counter.

Is it worth it, you ask? After all, three bucks equals three Dunkin Donut chocolate kremes or two packs of Dolly Madison Gems. Yes, and no. Yes for the flavorgasm and lack stomach ache/sugar crash afterward. No, because aren't cheap aches and pains part of the defining donut experience?

Donut Diaries, Entry #1

Is it our imagination, or do donuts taste better when served to customers on a lazy susan from behind bulletproof glass?

Clearly, people kill for the sinkers at Dat Donut (8249 S Cottage Grove Ave). Which is understandable. Take Dat's custard donut, with its dense, eggy filling and thick, powdered-sugar exterior. It's so sublimely doughy it's like a pillow one could nap upon for epochs. Conversely, the caramel frosted donut is light as air, smothered in finger-lickin' icing that melts over the sides.

Chocolate long johns, apple fritters, Boston cream - the list goes on for the hand-cut yeast bombs at this shop on Chicago's far South Side. But the hubcap-sized Big Dat remains the sweet to beat. Even behind thick glass, under fluorescent light, its glaze glimmers and dazzles.

Is it worth the possible gunshot wound and/or the onset of diabetes to obtain its glazed goodness?

"Yeh," the counter girl says, and she spins out a half dozen on the lazy susan that prove it.

Obama's Missed Pie Op

President Obama looked stressed in Elkhart, Ind. yesterday, as he tried to sell his economic stimulus plan. No wonder. Elkhart - the RV Capital of the World, with more than 100 RV manufacturers in a 100-mile radius - has seen its industry collapse and unemployment rocket to 15.3%.

At least these Hoosiers have first-class comfort food at hand, and Obama could have indulged had he driven 15 miles east. The town of Middlebury has a real live Main St. On it stands the Village Inn Restaurant (107 S Main), maker of big fat wide flaky creamy slices of pie.

Bonneted Mennonite women in pastel dresses and chunky white tennis shoes come in to bake the pies daily at 4:30 am. And yes, lard is the secret ingredient. You have to arrive before lunch to get the best selection, which includes strawberry, peanut butter, Snickers, and the life-changing banana cream.

"How's the pie?" the waitress asked the customer hunkered down at the counter, forking with a frenzy.

"Mmm. Mmm, mmm, mmm," came the reply.

That says it all.

Banana Cream Calling

You can deny it all you want, but 1 in 5 of you has devoured an entire pie solo; 35% of you have forked into pie for breakfast. It's a sinful tin-ful, to be sure. Oliver Cromwell banned pie in 1644, saying it was pagan. Restoration leaders lifted the sanction in 1660, saying they were hungry. The American Pie Council

educates the public on these vital facts and more.

But the best way to immerse in flaky goodness? Become a Pie of the Month Club member. No, you do not get an apple, pumpkin or banana cream treat each month, but rather an arty postcard with a quirky recipe to do-it-yourself. Crustless Coconut (President Obama's pastry passion) and Cape Breton Pork Pie (relax, it's made of dates and brown sugar) are among the sweet archives.

The club website has a pie data base, where members review pie places around the country, and a Pie Expert, who answers members' pie-baking questions. So if you want to know what state whips up the most billowy meringue, or how to thicken fruit filling, the club has the juicy answers.