Tag: The Pie Folks

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

The Pie Folks Offer a Hard-to-Find Pie

CREDIT: Ron Anderson

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.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

The Pie Folks introduce a pie mix.

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

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.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Pie Happy

CREDIT: Hannah Sayle

We love cupcakes and cookies, but is there any dessert as quintessentially American as a slice of pie? Consider, if you will, the American Pie Council, an organization dedicated to preserving America’s pie heritage. Call us when cupcakes get their own advocacy group.

So we’re fulfilling our civic duty and happily hopping on this summer’s pie-loving bandwagon. First stop: Three pie-preneurs, all found at local farmers markets.

Lazy Dog Farms, located in Bethel Springs, Tennessee, and owned by Bruce and Mary Scarberry, sets up shop every Saturday at the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market, with a range of whole and mini pies to supplement their produce offerings. The couple began the pie part of their business as a buffer until their first wave of crops came in.

Ever since, the Scarberrys have been selling their sweet and savory pies. Try a zesty mojito pie or a savory potato and onion pie, just $13 for a large and $3.50 for a mini. Their best seller? A not-quite Key lime pie, made with real limes but not with the small Key limes that give the famous pie flavor its name. (Lazy Dog Farms, lazydogfarms.com)

At the Memphis Farmers Market downtown, Downtown Pie Company and Grandma’s Desserts keep pie tins stocked and at the ready. Downtown Pie Company is owned and operated by Ann Hearn, who says she’s been baking pies for 40 years. For a while, she baked for a restaurant in Hot Springs, about which a reviewer wrote, “Oh the pie. It alone is worth a trip to Hot Springs.” (Hence their business motto: “Oh the pie!”)

Hearn and her husband can be found at the Memphis Farmers Market every Saturday, selling mini peach, blueberry, blackberry, and coconut cream pies, as well as their famous Lucille’s chocolate pie. You can also order a 10-inch pie and pick it up from their kitchen in Newport, Arkansas, for $14-$20 or a mini pie for $3.25-$5. (Downtown Pie Company, piesrme@gmail.com, 870-495-3894)

Nearby, Grandma’s Desserts has its own line of sweet potato, pecan, apple, peach, and honey walnut pies by the slice or the whole pie. They have samples available before you purchase, and the pies range from $12 to $15. You can order in advance or grab a slice the next time you’re passing through the downtown market. (Grandma’s Desserts, grandmasdesserts.com, 458-2197)

Outside of the farmers-market scene, head to The Pie Folks in Germantown, where owner Audrey Anderson has been perfecting her pie recipes for over a decade. Starting with the Coconut Pie Factory in 1997, she then opened the Pie Folks’ first location in Olive Branch and finally relocated to the Germantown location in 2010.

“Pies are really beginning to come to the forefront,” Anderson says. “We’ve got all these cupcakes and things like that, but pie is a favorite American pastime.”

Walk in Tuesday through Saturday and pick up one of her “Slap Your Mama Chocolate Pies,” a creamy fudge pie that has won multiple awards at the American Pie Council’s National Pie Championship. Or pick up any one of the other 23 flavors, including a coconut cream pie, the Moonshiner’s Bourbon pie, and another award-winner, her Delightful Strawberry Pie. A whole pie will run you between $16 and $18; a half-pie, $9; a slice of pie, $4; and a half-and-half pie combination of your choosing goes for $19. (The Pie Folks, 7781 Farmington Blvd., 752-5454, thepiefolks.com)

And although it’s known for cupcakes with a cult-like following, Muddy’s Bake Shop is also churning out a variety of from-scratch pies every week.

“It’s my favorite thing to make; it’s my favorite thing to eat,” says owner Kat Gordon. “The great thing about pie is it’s totally limitless. It’s food inside of other food! You’ve got a bottom crust, sometimes a top crust, and you can really put just about anything you want in the middle.”

Her pie flavors are as well-executed and adorably named as her cupcakes. Try “Kick in the Pants” pie, a tart lemon butter pie, or “Cocoa Chanel,” a classic chocolate chess pie. In the summer, expect treats like strawberry basil pie or a double-crust blueberry pie. In the winter, try sweet potato, apple with sharp cheddar baked into the crust, or a pie with chocolate chip cookie filling spiked with whisky.

Pies range from $20 to $24 for a whole, $2 for a mini pie, and $3.50-$4 for a slice. Pre-ordering is the best option for whole pies and bulk orders of mini pies, but you can swing in and grab a slice of pie any time the bakery is open. (Muddy’s Bake Shop, 5101 Sanderlin, 683-8844, muddysbakeshop.com)