Audrey Anderson – Memphis Flyer

Yes, you can get a homemade mincemeat pie locally.

And you don’t have to be from the North to like it.

Audrey Anderson makes them at her bakery, The Pie Folks, in Cordova.

But first, here’s why mincemeat is my favorite. In addition to its tantalizing taste, a lot has to do with nostalgia.

My dad was born in Minneapolis, so our Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners didn’t include cornbread dressing, candied yams with marshmallows, and other Southern fare. We had bread dressing or stuffing with raisins and boiled, mashed rutabagas with butter. We had pumpkin pie, but we also had mincemeat pie.

Ron Anderson

The Pie Folks owner Audrey Anderson and her mincemeat pie

My mom used None Such mincemeat, which still is available, to make her pies, but she added four peeled, cored, and sliced apples to the mixture so she could make two 9-inch pies. I still use None Such, but I’ve tried other ways to get mincemeat pies in and around Memphis.

Chef Josh Steiner surprised me on my birthday one year with a mincemeat pie he made from scratch at his old Strano! restaurant. It was fabulous.

Christine Martin, a friend who is a cashier at Carlisle’s Cash Saver in Holly Springs, gave me a mincemeat pie recipe from her mother-in-law, the late Ollie Martin. In beautiful handwriting were listed 11 (!) ingredients, which included a half pound of chopped suet. I am going to try making that one of these days.

But, for now, why not order one from The Pie Folks?

Ron Anderson

Anderson began making mincemeat pies about five or six years ago. “I had not heard of a mincemeat pie until we started getting calls around the holiday time,” she says. “I went online to see what it was and try a few of the recipes and come up with one that was good.”

Then, she says, “The recipe I found online that I made, I tweaked it with different spices to where I could eat it.”

Most people who requested the pie were from “up North,” Anderson says. “It is not common in the South. Most people who buy it are older people. I’ve never had a younger person.” Her mincemeat pie fans are “60 and above.”

To make them, Anderson begins with raisins, but, she says, “You have to let those raisins swell in water. I don’t use straight raisins. I let them kind of swell. It makes them softer.”

A mincemeat pie consists of “a lot of spices,” including cinnamon and nutmeg. “It’s spices that make it good.”

She also uses some meat. “Some people put lean beef in, but I don’t like that texture. I like to use ground beef.”

Her 9-inch mincemeat pies, which sell for $27.99, are more popular around Christmas. “I make them any time, but people only request them during the holidays.”

And, she says, “The people who get them, usually I do them for them every year. They will be back.”

Kirk Hevener bought his first Pie Folks mincemeat pie this year for Thanksgiving. “My dad passed away a couple of years ago, but mincemeat pie was his favorite pie and we always had it at Thanksgiving,” he says.

His family ate mincemeat pie “usually just Thanksgiving. We didn’t really go all out for Christmas.”

Mincemeat pie, which his dad bought somewhere each year, was just one of several pies served.

His dad, Gene Hevener, “was born in Ohio. Maybe that’s where he picked it up. I never realized maybe it’s a Northern thing. I was really happy to discover The Pie Folks had it, even though it was a special-order pie.”

Hevener, an assistant professor at the College of Pharmacy at UT Health Science Center, says just he and his wife, Dionne, celebrated Thanksgiving. They did a “virtual Thanksgiving this year via TVs and Zoom.”

Hevener’s eaten mincemeat pie “30, 35 years. I’m in my 40s now. I’ve been eating it since I was a little kid.”

And, he says, “I like mincemeat pie. It’s an interesting pie. I like to put a little vanilla ice cream with it and it’s awesome.”

The Pie Folks is at 1028 N. Germantown Parkway in Cordova; (901) 752-5454.

If you like Audrey Anderson‘s banana cream pie from The Pie Folks, get in the kitchen and make one of your own — using her instant banana cream pie mix, of course.

Anderson, owner/chef at The Pie Folks & Bistro in Cordova, now has her Ape Wild Banana Cream Pie Filling mix in Kroger stores in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

This began about a year ago. One of her customers who works at Kroger, said, “Your pies are so good, I’m going to have somebody from Kroger reach out to you,” Anderson says.

Michael Donahue

Going bananas in the bakery — The Pie Folks’ Audrey Anderson shows off her instant banana cream pie.

Someone from the regional corporate office then came by and said, “I don’t eat that much sweets.” He took an “itty bitty bite” and said, “Your pies are really good.”

Anderson then met with other people from the regional corporate office, who told her they wanted to go with the banana cream pie.

“I had to get a chemist to formulate the flavor. They formed my recipe into a dry mix. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it. You give them your recipe, and they do their magic on it.”

It took a few times for the chemists to come up with the exact taste, Anderson says. They would send the mix to her overnight by FedEx in Ziploc bags. “It took probably 10 times to get it like mine. Sometimes it was too sweet. Sometimes not sweet enough. They needed to bring up the banana flavor in it sometimes. Things like that. We got the perfect one.”

The pie “had to taste exactly like the one I was making,” she says.

To make the pie, one banana, one eight-ounce tub of whipped topping, a half cup of water, and one graham cracker crust also are needed. The banana is sliced on top of the graham cracker crust. The filling mixture then is spread over the bananas.

You don’t bake it, Anderson says. “It has to set up. When you make it, it’s not going to be totally liquid, but kind of soft. It’s got a six-hour set-up time so it will be firm enough for you to be able to slice it.”

Anderson didn’t think the banana cream would be the first of her pies to be made into a mix. “I thought the chocolate pie would be my golden child. I really thought that would be the one. You never know how things will happen.”

Born in Tunica, Anderson only made “sweets” — cookies and candy — at home. “My mother had 12 kids. None of the kids ever cooked. My mom did all the cooking. Whenever she had a baby, my daddy did the cooking.”

Anderson made her first pie after she was married; she made her mother’s pumpkin pie from memory. “My mother never wrote out a recipe,” she says.

Anderson opened her first bakery, The Poconut Pie Factory, in 1997 in the Eastgate Shopping Center. It was named after the coconut sweet potato pie, which was the bakery’s signature pie. Anderson’s Slap Yo Mama Chocolate Pie later became her signature pie. The bakery moved to Olive Branch, where it was re-named The Pie Folks, then to Germantown and, finally, to Cordova.

Anderson serves 19 of her 27 flavors of pies each day at The Pie Folks & Bistro. The pies are available by slice, half, and whole. She also bakes cupcakes and serves lunch.

She is planning more pie mixes. “The next one is going to be my apple and my peach pie. I’m going to make it to where you can use apple pie filling from the can. And put a recipe on there if you want to do fresh apples.”

Anderson currently uses her pie mix to make her banana cream pies at the bakery. “It’s my mix. It saves me time. It takes me 30 minutes to make a pie, to do everything. Now I can make it in five minutes.”

The Pie Folks, 1028 North Germantown Parkway, 752-5454

The Pie Folks introduce a pie mix.