“My mother’s a wonderful baker, but she hates pie,” Maisie Howard said as she demonstrated her self-taught pie technique last week. “She did make my apron, though,” the 42-year-old added while rolling out chilled, all-butter dough in her Hinesburg kitchen.
Howard’s bright pinafore bore images of a dozen different lattice-crusted and cream-topped beauties, along with pumpkin and fresh strawberry pies. It previewed the bounty to be offered this Sunday, August 13, at the annual Rokeby Museum Pie & Ice Cream Social fundraiser that Howard coordinates as a volunteer.
For $8, attendees can dig into a generous sixth of a pie with ice cream. The social also features live music, lawn games and free entry to the National Historic Landmark in Ferrisburgh, which was home to four generations of Quaker abolitionists and a stop on the Underground Railroad. The event raises $3,000 to $4,000 a year for the museum. Rokeby is currently updating its main exhibit, which brings to life the stories of former slaves who found refuge there in the 1830s.
About 20 volunteers will bake homemade pies, some of them gluten-free, Howard said. Gilfeather’s Fine Provisions in Ferrisburgh and Poorhouse Pies in Underhill also donate pies. Ben & Jerry’s contributes ice cream to top slices ranging from chocolate-pecan to the peach-blueberry Howard made last week to freeze unbaked.
Last year, about 275 people ate through 65 pies, which sold out 10 minutes before the event’s close. “We’re shooting for 70 pies this year,” Howard said. She will contribute four to six. All varieties are welcome, although cream pies are discouraged because they’re hard to keep chilled.
Among the most prolific bakers is Brett Walker of Richmond, whose partner is on the Rokeby board. “My goal is 14 this year,” Walker, 54, said by phone. He will make about half ahead and freeze them unbaked.
Like Howard, Walker is a self-taught pie baker; he relies on science-based recipe sources such as America’s Test Kitchen. His crusts contain about two-thirds butter for flavor and the balance in shortening for flakiness.
Walker’s roster includes chocolate brownie, crumb-topped peach-bourbon, and an unusual blueberry-orange containing a whole orange simmered and puréed with some of the blueberries.
Given the event’s mid-August date, Howard said blueberry pies abound. Her family picked blueberries at Williston’s Isham Family Farm to combine with Pennsylvania peaches for her demo pie.
Howard has refined her process through well-documented trial and error, but she said she learned a fruit filling tip — “Really pack it in there” — from an early pastry job at the long-shuttered Village Cup in Jericho.
She recently started using a stand mixer for her all-butter dough because it retains some butter chunks, which yield a flakier crust. To finish the dough, she uses ice water, although she knows cold vodka improves tenderness by inhibiting gluten formation. “I don’t have room for the bottle in my freezer; it’s full of chicken nuggets,” the mother of two said with a laugh.
Howard always adds lemon zest and juice to fruit and prefers thickening the filling with cornstarch or tapioca starch over flour. When freezing fruit pies for later baking, she uses more thickener to absorb the extra water from freezing.
As she assembled her pie, Howard divulged another liquid-reduction trick: a couple tablespoons of bread crumbs sprinkled across the bottom crust. After weaving a lattice crust, she tightly wrapped the pie in two layers of plastic, to which she would later add a layer of foil. Before baking the frozen pie, she will brush the crust with heavy cream and sprinkle it with coarse sugar.
But looks aren’t everything, Howard noted: “The thing about pie is that it doesn’t have to be perfect because it’s going to taste good no matter what.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Pie It Forward | Rokeby Museum supporters bake pies and share tips ahead of a Ferrisburgh fundraiser”
This article appears in The Animal Issue 2023.
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