National Pie Day
I can’t truly express how much I love pie. Apple pie. Cherry pie. Buttermilk pie. Chess pie. Key lime pie. Chocolate cream pie. Pecan pie. ALL THE PIES (except banana cream; that means more for you, though). I will take pie over cake any day. I adore pie.
A .gif of Twin Peaks’ Log Lady declaring her slice of cherry pie “a miracle.”
via GIPHYRejoice, ye fellow pie lovers; it’s National Pie Day. Actually, it’s one of two national pie days but this one is the more widely favored of the two. Registered by the American Pie Council in 1986, National Pie Day began in Boulder, Colorado around 1975, when Charlie Papazian—of the Great American Beer Festival fame—told his students that he was declaring his birthday National Pie Day. Eleven years later, when he founded the American Pie Council, he really did!
Photo by SnapwireSnaps: A photo of a person pouring prepared apples into a pie crust.
The America Pie Council hosts an annual National Pie Championship—usually, in Celebration, Florida—where amateur, professional, and commercial bakers can show off their pie baking prowess and seek to claim nation’s best pie. There are over 100 different flavor categories bakers can compete in, well there were in 2019. Likely because of the pandemic, there doesn’t seem to have been a contest since 2019; the APC doesn’t seem to have updated their website since 2019 either. I certainly hope that, when it is safe to hold that kind of event again, we will see the return of the contest. I would love to go some day.via GIPHY
A .gif from Fairly Odd Parents: Timmy’s dad is wearing a pie hat and waving flags that read “go” and “pie” as he cheers for a pie baking in the oven.
Pie-making is, at least, a two millennia-old tradition: the first pies—mostly open-top meat pies—were enjoyed by the Egyptians and the Greeks. The first written recipe for a pie, a double-crusted pie at that, was recorded in Cato the Elder’s De Agri Cultura in the 2nd century BCE: it was a Roman recipe called placenta and it was a rye-crusted honeyed goat cheese pie—which you better believe I will be trying very soon; I think I’ll be using this recipe.
Photo by Patty Jansen: A photo of a muffin tin full of decorated mini meat pies.
And it’s not all about the filling, pie crusts are more than a vehicle for transporting the filling: they’re a means of creative expression. From old fashioned lattice tops and braided edges to using molds and pie top cutters, decorative pie crusts have been a mainstay for several centuries. Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin has taken decorative pie crusts to a whole new level; you should definitely check out her Instagram. She’s created the Millennium Falcon and done character art and portraits all with pie crusts. My absolute favorite is her video of creating just a gorgeous piece of character art of Eddie Munson from Stranger Things.
@thepieous Eddie Munson = my new fictional crush. Taking a *slight* edge over Bowie’s Jareth. But you can’t have either of them. They’re both my boyfriends.#pietraits #pieart #food #strangerthings #eddiemuson @ ♬ Master of Puppets - Metallica
I am certainly no Jessica but I do enjoy baking pies. Sometimes, I’ll even cut a design into the top crust that pulls double duty as venting. Most recently, I made a pie for New Year’s Eve. Much like flowers, fruits have their own symbolic meanings and I made my pie keeping those meanings in mind: raspberries, for kindness and compassion; strawberries, for abundance and love; blueberries, for optimism; and blackberries, for sincerity, clarity of thought, and kindness because a little more kindness will never go amiss. While I don’t necessarily put a lot of stock in the symbology of fruit, I wanted to hold those ideas, those wishes in my head as we headed into 2023. I also chose to make this particular pie because I love berries. It was delicious.
Photo by gate74: Photo of a lattice top blueberry pie with one slice cut out and slightly pulled away from the pie.
While I thoroughly enjoy all sorts of pies, I think that, for this National Pie Day, I’m going back to my roots. I am, at heart, a Kentucky kid and I am all about some good bourbon and I want to make a vanilla bourbon buttermilk pie (recipe below). It is smooth and rich and it puts me in mind of the good memories I have from Kentucky.
A .gif of Donald Duck scarfing down a slice of pie.
National Pie Day, given the absolutely bonkers amount of variety, is a come one, come all holiday. Regardless of your baking expertise or your particular flavor preference—sweet or savory; fruit or cream—there is a pie out there for you and I hope that, whether it’s from scratch, from a bakery, at a diner counter, or out of the freezer section of the supermarket, you will get to enjoy that pie today. Or, failing that, you get the opportunity to rummage through your cookbooks or scour the internet for a recipe for the pie you want to stuff your face with next. I’ve even put together a pie-themed playlist, spanning a wide variety of genres, to listen to while you do so. (Be forewarned: given the nature of pie as metaphor, a lot of pie-themed songs are laden with blatant innuendo. So, there’s that.)https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2zXHiIIQcEI141pM7ujjrS?si=a44ce4723a544089
A .gif from Sesame Street; Bert pies Ernie in the face.
via GIPHYWell, that’s one way of stuffing some pie in your face.Happy National Pie Day! Go forth and enjoy deliciousness—it’s pie time!
An animated .gif that says, “it’s pie time.” A slice of one kind of pie is replaced by a pie slice from another kind of pie.
JJ’s Vanilla Bourbon Buttermilk Pie
1 cold 9” pie crust3 eggs1 ¼ cups granulated sugar¼ tsp kosher salt3 tbsp all-purpose flour½ cup butter (one stick), melted and cooled¾ cup buttermilk, or sour milk3 ¼ tbs Kentucky bourbon1 ½ tsp vanilla1 tbsp lemon juice
- Preheat oven to 350°F/176°C
- Roll your pie crust out and gently roll it onto a rolling pin to transfer it into a 9-inch pie dish; trim off the excess crust (and snack on it. Or don’t; it’s [your] prerogative) and crimp the edges with your fingers or a fork. Put that bad boy in the fridge.
- Whisk the eggs and sugar together until it’s all frothy.
- Add the remaining ingredients and whisk all that stuff together until smooth.
- Pour mixture into the cold pie crust.
- Stick it in the oven.
- After around 15 to 20 minutes, wrap some foil around the outer crust.
- Let it continue baking for another 35-45 minutes (it’s usually closer to 45 for me); remove from the oven when it’s almost set—the center should jiggle just a bit. REMEMBER YOUR OVEN MITTS. Not that I’ve ever had an issue with that.
- Cool that sucker on a wire rack for 2 hours, giving it plenty of time to finish setting.
- Serve with whipped cream and/or a light dusting of nutmeg and a pinch of cinnamon.
