Pie-hacking baker Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin (AKA @thePieous) writes, "I've been experimenting with pushing the boundaries of pie design for just over a year now, but my big white whale – how to make pies 'tall' – had always eluded me… until today. Meet my new invention: Piescrapers! What is a Piescraper? Essentially a pie that is built 'up' using a series of engineering and baking tricks to enhance structural integrity and make tall pies stable, and delicious!"
I hit upon the idea while dabbling with another passion of mine – paper sculpture. It turns out that many of the techniques involved in making 2D paper into complex and sturdy 3D structures can be applied to pie pastry – with a few special tricks like creating moisture barriers to prevent pastry-specific problems, and using hidden but edible stabilizing agents – all of which I share in my videos.
Why do I care so much about making pies tall? Because I have a theory that one of the reasons cakes have always beaten pies out for centre stage at weddings and fancy dessert buffets is because of pies' low profile. Delicious though they may be, pies just don't have that 'across the room wow factor' of a three tiered cake. I love pies and my mission with Pies Are Awesome is to show the world that pies aren't just folksy family comfort food, but can be beautiful, epic and awesome too! With my first Piescraper tutorial I give people a taste of how they can bust the current pie paradigm (yes, you just read 'pie paradigm') and make pies the star of their big events.
She's got a whole book of this stuff: Pies Are Awesome Vol 1 "Pie-Modding": How to Epic-Up Store Bought Pies and Be the Hero of the Party.
