Want to know how to make a excellent pie?
Check with Pie Woman.
Chelsea Frost, a 34-calendar year-outdated Hightstown baker has been wowing New Jersey pie enthusiasts for the earlier 6 years with her exclusive, farm-fresh creations like salted honey lavender, chocolate-lined strawberry, cranberry chess and sweet corn custard. She sells them at community pop-ups and by home shipping Pie Female is an online small business only.
I questioned.
According to Pie Lady, to make excellent pies, you should not dally with nearly anything other than butter (“Butter makes every thing better,” Frost explained) use serious sugar (“No pretend sugar sugar is my weak spot”) and increase salt (“Salt will bring out any taste). Also, freeze your dough appropriate right after rolling (“It helps hold its condition a large amount superior”). And for goodness sake, will not rush the approach.
“A good deal of treatment goes into producing a pie. It will take time.”
Loving making pies is a necessary ingredient too.
“I like it,” Frost explained. “Making pies is my hobby.”
A hobby Frost, a mom of two, turned into a job by chance.
Whilst Frost always liked to cook and bake — ‘I grew up in the kitchen with my mom,” she reported — it was only six years in the past that she started out performing at farm-to-table restaurant 12 Farms in Hightstown, “so I can be a human, not just a mother.”
Just before Thanksgiving, her boss asked her to make desserts for the holiday. “He experienced heard that I preferred to bake.”
“I begun incredibly common,” she stated, “creating pumpkin, apple, chocolate pecan.”
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The pies were being a substantial success, so she commenced to make them on the facet, also.
“It begun minimal, perhaps 30 pies the 1st calendar year, but the business enterprise grew exponentially each and every yr,” Frost said.
The pie options grew also.
She comes up with ideas depending on what is escalating on New Jersey’s farms and what she’s got at household.
All through corn season, she offers a bright yellow buttermilk-primarily based custard pie laced with pureed fresh Jersey corn. “It preferences like a New Jersey summer months,” she stated. “I’m truly very pleased of it.”
When she experienced 10 bunches of refreshing mint on hand, she steeped the mint in black tea with cream and ended up with Sunshine Tea pie. “It is such a delight,” she stated. “It preferences like a significant glass of iced tea in custard.”
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When beets were at the completely ready, she made use of them to produce brown sugar beet custard that made for a stunningly gorgeous pie that even beet haters ended up loving.
And then you will find her bestseller: salted honey lavender pie. “It can be designed with area honey and has significant flakes of salt on top rated,” she stated. “And it has lavender in it. It is really not soapy or perfumy.”
It is, nevertheless, “tasty,” claimed Thomas Pizzonia, baker at Just about Household Standard, a popular coffee shop in Lincroft.
“Her pies are special,” Pizzonia extra. “She will come up with intriguing taste combos.” Even for regular pies, including pumpkin pie. “How several individuals seriously adore pumpkin pie?” Frost said. “If there is a least beloved pie, pumpkin pie has got to be it.”
So she tweaked it — and additional a caramel topping. As a end result, Pizzonia said, “she brought pumpkin pie back again into my life.” (It should go with out declaring that her pumpkin filling does not come out of a can but is farm-purchased and roasted and pureed by Frost.)
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James Beard-award semifinalist Matthew Rosenzweig of The Baker’s Grove in Shrewsbury is a lover as well. He presents her pies at his bakeshop.
“She helps make stuff that’s handmade but elevated.” Amid his favorites are the grapefruit chess pie, apple crumb pie and the rustic chocolate.
Chef-owner Leia Gaccione of South + Pine in Morristown will get Pie Girl pies for household and buddies…and herself. “When I had her olive cara cara pie, I couldn’t management myself. I had a person slice. Then a further slice. Do not ask.”
These days, Frost sells from 50 to 70 pies for each 7 days (some 200 all over the holiday seasons) via her Instagram account where she posts her weekly offerings each Saturday and through venerated New Jersey foods merchandise supplier Harvest Fall. Her goal is to have a brick-and-mortar store one working day.
“I will have even a lot more wide range then,” she reported.
She has by now expanded to offering quiches and galettes, and at some point she hopes to supply meat pies.
But she assures never chicken pot pie.
“I loathe soup,” she said. “Hen pot pie is like soup in a pie crust. It will make me really unfortunate.”
What makes her joyful is generating pies that folks love. Which, she reported, nevertheless manages to shock her.
“I won’t be able to inform you how a lot of occasions I have listened to, ‘Yours is the greatest pie I have ever experienced,'” she claimed. “That makes me content.”
Esther Davidowitz is the food editor for NorthJersey.com. For additional on where by to dine and drink, please subscribe today and indication up for our North Jersey Eats publication.
Electronic mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @estherdavido
