PHOTOS BY ANGELINA MARIE
SHORT EARED DOG PHOTOGRAPHY
Publishing a magazine sometimes means eating a lot of pie.
Brick & Elm collaborated with Amarillo Little Theatre during its production of the musical Waitress—where pie-baking is a central storyline—by hosting the West Texas Waitress Pie-Baking Contest. The winning pies won trophies, subscriptions to our magazine, and got their hilariously named pies mentioned in the show.
Judges Michele McAffrey, Jason Boyett, Jason Crespin, Tyler Llewellyn and Leslie Fuller-Meier tasted 20 different pies for the contest, selecting winners across three categories: “Sweetie Pies,” “Meat Me in the Middle” Savory Pies, and “Filling Like a Million Bucks” Weird and Wacky Pies. Amarillo Little Theatre also identified an Honorable Mention, and awarded extra points throughout the contest for creative pie names.
The winners were gracious enough to share their recipes with us, along with a few baking tips.
Sweetie Pie
Apple-ly Ever After by KelLi BuLLard
Served warm, the nostalgia and flavor of this simple pie elicited deep sighs of contentment from our judges. It’s a simple, traditional apple pie. And it is amazing.
“The basic recipe came out of the old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook I’ve had since I got married in 1979,” says Kelli Bullard. “I have tweaked it a little.”
To start, she adds less cinnamon and more sugar than the original recipe. And she changed the crust. A couple of years ago, Bullard began working with a crust recipe that combines shortening with butter. “It comes together really nicely,” she says. “It’s a refrigerator dough, so you make it ahead of time and refrigerate it for at least two hours until you use it.” You can also store it in the freezer, if necessary.
Bullard had struggled with crumbly crusts in the past, but this one holds together. Not that she wants every crust to be perfect, though. “You don’t want the crust to look too uniform, because then it looks like a commercially baked pie. You want it to have that special homey touch to it,” she says.
Pro Tip: “Too much cinnamon overpowers the flavor of the apples. I think people make that mistake a lot with apple pie, but then all you taste is the cinnamon. You want to taste the apples.”
Filling
6 cups thinly sliced, peeled apples (Granny Smith, preferably)
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter
Pie crust (recipe below)
Combine sugar, flour and cinnamon in small bowl. Add to sliced apples and toss to coat fruit. Roll out pie crust, and place in a 9-inch pie pan. Fill with apple mixture, dot with butter, and place top crust over apples. Flute crust edges and cut slits in top crust. Cover edges with foil to prevent overbaking. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Remove foil, and bake an additional 20 to 25 minutes, or until edges are nicely browned.
Flaky Pie Crust
2-½ cups flour (spooned and leveled)
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, chilled and cubed
⅔ cup vegetable shortening, chilled
½ cup ice water
Mix flour and salt together in a large bowl. Add butter and shortening.
Using a pastry cutter (or two forks), cut the butter and shortening into the mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Drizzle in cold water, one tablespoon at a time, and stir with a rubber spatula after each addition. Stop adding water when the dough begins to form large clumps.
Transfer the pie dough to a floured surface. Using floured hands, fold the dough into itself until the flour is fully incorporated into the fats. Divide in half and flatten each half into a 1-inch disc.
Wrap each disc in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 5 days (may be frozen up to 3 months). This recipe makes a double crust pie, using one disc for bottom crust and one for top crust.
“Meat Me in the Middle” Savory Pie
“Earl Has to Die” Chicken Pecan Pie by René Brain
After more than a dozen gooey, sugary, meringue-y pies, our judges were ready for something different. René Brain’s chicken pecan quiche—which she renamed for this contest—captured our attention and taste buds.
“I’ve done it for years,” says Brain, who first encountered the recipe in Southern Living. Brain operated the Grand Street Tea Room in Borger from 1998 to 2002, and this pie was a staple. “On the day we closed, we served it to 119 people. They were still lined out the door when I ran out of everything,” she says.
Brain still makes the quiche today for family gatherings and special events, including mini individual pies. “It’s just so pretty,” she says.
Hearing it referenced by name during a production of Waitress was a treat. “When they said, ‘I’ll have some of René Brain’s ‘Earl Has to Die’ pie,’ I just about fell out of my chair,” she laughs. In Waitress, Earl is the name of the lead character’s abusive husband, played locally by Chris Gandy. Audiences despised him, and rightly so.
Pro Tip: “Follow the recipe. I tweak almost everything else but there was no reason to tweak this. It’s so unusual for me to follow a recipe. But all this works.”
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
¾ cup chopped pecans
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon paprika
⅓ cup vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
8 ounces sour cream
¼ cup mayonnaise
½ cup chicken broth
2 cups chopped cooked chicken
½ cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
¼ cup onion, minced
¼ teaspoon dried whole dill weed
3 drops hot sauce
Combine first 5 ingredients in a bowl; stir in oil and set aside ¼ of the mixture.
Press remaining mixture into bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch quiche dish. Prick the bottom and sides of the crust with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes; set aside.
Combine eggs, sour cream, mayonnaise and chicken broth in a medium bowl; stir to combine. Stir in cooked chicken, cheddar cheese, onion, dill and hot sauce. Pour mixture over prepared crust.
Sprinkle reserved crumb mixture over filling. Top with pecan halves, if desired. Bake at
325 degrees for 45 minutes.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
“Filling Like a Million Bucks” Weird & Wacky Pie
After Midnight Performance Patron a.k.a. Salty Drunk Nut Job by Matt Morgan
The strong bourbon flavor of this pie knocked a few judges out of their seats, as did the hilarious name and description.
“I’m a sucker for salty and sweet, so the thought of making a salty pecan pie was intriguing,” says Matt Morgan, who is also an occasional contributor to Brick & Elm. (The pies were all judged anonymously.) In the past, he had made candy-like pecan bars using a shortbread crust, and decided to utilize the same crust in a pie recipe.
Otherwise, he’d never made the pie before submitting it for the contest.
“Everything in that pie is to the nth degree,” Morgan says, right down to using Woodford Reserve Double Oaked Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. “That was on purpose,” he adds, because this was a competition, and other than the silly name, he took the baking very seriously. “I used the best butter I could find, and good bourbon.”
The name definitely caught the judges’ attention, a reference to a particular flavor of late-night audience members at the theater. “My pie is the perfect analogy for a patron attending an added midnight performance,” Morgan wrote in his pie submission. He’s an ALT insider, having served on the nonprofit’s board. His wife, Jenny, is a frequent performer. “Having been involved there for so long, there’s just a reputation of the people who come to the midnight shows at the Adventure Space,” he says. In other words, they’re equal parts salty and boozy.
Pro Tip: “Typically, pecan pie uses a golden syrup, but I didn’t do that. I used a bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup.”
Crust
1 cup unsalted butter
½ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
Filling
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
⅔ cup packed dark brown sugar
⅔ cup light corn syrup
½ cup pure maple syrup
3 large eggs, room temperature
2 tablespoons bourbon, plus a splash
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt (can use smoked, if you prefer)
2 ½ cups toasted pecans (half left whole, the other half chopped)
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a pie pan or line with parchment. Make the crust: Brown butter over medium heat for around 8 to 10 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes. Stir together brown butter, sugar, vanilla and salt. Add flour and stir until combined. Press mixture into pie pan and bake for 13 to 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, make filling. Brown butter for filling for 4 to 5 minutes; cool in a bowl. Add brown sugar, corn syrup and maple syrup to butter. Stir in eggs, bourbon, vanilla and salt. Top baked crust with pecans in neat concentric circles. Pour filling over pecans. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes. While still warm, sprinkle top of pie with Kosher salt or salt flakes.
Honorable Mention
In the Limelight Key Lime Pie by Dr. Adan Gonzalez
Our judges lit up at the appearance of this pie while also appreciating its tangy overall flavor, lightly sweetened lime custard, and a crust made from homemade graham crackers.
Dr. Adan Gonzalez is a nephrologist at Amarillo Nephrology Associates by day, and apparently a really fantastic baker by night. His recipe is one tweaked from America’s Test Kitchen and has become a family favorite. Gonzalez uses less sugar than the original recipe calls for, and relies on regular limes instead of key limes. Before you gasp in horror, let him explain:
“The filling has quite a bit of zest in the recipe, and the key limes’ rinds are too thin to get a good zest,” he says. Our judges gave him a pass, and he does use key limes in the garnish.
Perhaps most impressive to us was Gonzalez’s insistence on homemade graham crackers for the crust. “The graham cracker recipe calls for graham flour, which is simply coarsely ground whole wheat flour,” he says. He wasn’t able to find it locally, so he made the graham flour himself, adding ⅓ cup of wheat bran and two teaspoons of wheat germ to ⅔ cup white flour.
He said the effort is worth it for the texture and richer flavor of the crust. And though Gonzalez was unable to find graham flour during the competition, he says it can be ordered online or requested at the grocery store.
Pro Tip: “I learned the wheat kernel is made of three parts: the endosperm (which is white flour), wheat bran (outer shell), and wheat germ (embryo or sprouting section).”
From-Scratch Graham Cracker Crust
1 ½ cups (8 ¼ ounces/234 grams) graham flour*
¾ cup (3 ¾ ounces/106 grams) all-purpose flour
½ cup (3 ½ ounces/99 grams) sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon
Ground cinnamon
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces and chilled
5 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
*Graham flour is sold at well-stocked supermarkets and health food stores. Labeling may vary: Both Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Graham Flour and Arrowhead Mills Stone-Ground Whole Wheat Flour work well.
Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 375 degrees. Process graham flour, all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in food processor until combined, about 3 seconds. Add butter and process until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal, about 15 seconds. Add water, molasses and vanilla, and process until dough comes together, about 20 seconds.
Transfer dough to counter and divide into 4 equal pieces. Working with 1 piece of dough at a time (keep remaining pieces covered with plastic wrap), roll into 11- by 8-inch rectangles, ¹⁄8 inch thick, between 2 large sheets of parchment paper. Remove top piece of parchment and trim dough into tidy 10- by 7½-inch rectangle with knife, then score into 12 2 1⁄2- inch squares. Prick each square several times with fork.
Slide 2 pieces of rolled-out and scored dough, still on parchment, onto separate baking sheets. Bake until golden brown and edges are firm, about 15 minutes, switching and rotating sheets halfway through baking. Slide baked crackers, still on parchment, onto wire rack. Repeat with remaining 2 pieces of rolled-out dough. Let crackers cool completely. Transfer cooled crackers, still on parchment, to cutting board and carefully cut apart along scored lines. (Graham crackers can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.)
Lime Filling
4 teaspoons grated lime zest
½ cup lime juice from 3 to 4 limes
4 large egg yolks
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
For the filling: Whisk zest and yolks in medium bowl until tinted light green, about 2 minutes. Beat in milk, then juice; set aside at room temperature to thicken.
For the crust: Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Mix graham cracker crumbs and sugar in medium bowl. Add butter; stir with fork until well blended. Pour mixture into a 9-inch pie pan; press crumbs over bottom and up sides of pan to form an even crust. Bake until lightly browned and fragrant, about 15 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack; cool to room temperature, about 20 minutes. Pour lime filling into crust; bake until center is set, yet wiggly when jiggled, 15 to 17 minutes. Return pie to wire rack; cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until well chilled, at least 3 hours. (Can be covered with lightly oiled or oil-sprayed plastic wrap laid directly on filling and refrigerated up to 1 day.)
For the whipped cream: Up to 2 hours before serving, whip cream in medium bowl to very soft peaks. Adding confectioners’ sugar 1 tablespoon at a time, continue whipping to just-stiff peaks. Decoratively pipe whipped cream over filling or spread evenly with rubber spatula. Garnish with lime slices and serve.
