Bake Sale Goods + A Lesson on Making Pie on a Stick

The San Diego Food Bloggers Bake Sale is officially over and while the count is still being tallied (looks like we’re ahead of last year), there were some lessons to learned from this year. And really, I should have learned them after last year’s Faux Ho’s debacle: never experiment with an untested recipe the day before.

I was a little bit ambitious this year and decided to make two things: my mother’s recipe for pecan tarts and pie on a stick resembling a eye ball. I got it in my head a few weeks in advance that I liked the sounds of ‘pie’ and ‘eye’ together. I imagined an eye ball on a stick with gooey strawberry filling oozing out of it; a “pie eye” if you will.

The filling was easy enough: fresh strawberries with sugar, a pat of butter and a bit of water and cornstarch to thicken it up, all mashed up to fit into a pie.

After three attempts making a mold with a 3D printer (with a lot of gracious assistance from JennyWenny’s husband), I finally arrived at a design that worked for my needs but it was the final execution that needed some tweaking.

Some lessons learned when making pie on a stick:

• Less filling and dough made as thin as possible is an absolute necessity when putting it on a stick, otherwise it becomes too top heavy.
• Lollipop stick should be placed half way or more inside the dough for maximum hold. Any less and the possibility of the pie falling off increases.
• Seal the pie with a light egg wash. Using the same egg wash, brush a little bit on top of the dough before baking with a light sprinkling of white sugar.
• As cute (or in my case, gory) as pies on a stick were, the work to create them was a bit too much. Sometimes a regular pie is just as delicious.

There’s still time to make a donation to the San Diego Food Blogger’s Bake Sale benefitting No Kid Hungry. You have until Wednesday to donate here. A big thank you to everyone who came out for the event!