Well, at least I have three Piefests chronicled on this website.  It’s too bad the others are lost to the archives.  What with planning a wedding a month later and all, there was some question whether there would be a Piefest at all this year, but boy am I glad we did it.  We had a perfect day and perfect people and some great pies.

Here’s the rundown with photos courtesy of John Berube, one of the greatest pie photographers this country has ever seen.  Hopefully he doesn’t mind me bogarting his photos

Best Presentation ~ Potato Ricotta & Onion Rustic Pie
Shanna Berube has a history of making amazing food that John photographs and I look at online and want to eat, so I can’t say it’s surprising that they won this award.  Presentation aside, it was also wicked tasty.

Most Ambitious / Most Original ~ Avocado Cream Pie
It was a tough year for cream pies in general, but Vered Siegel’s avocado cream pie was one of the first to arrive so it was out in the sun longer than most and, well, the sun won.  But that’s why we have an award for most ambitious.

Best Crust, Best Misc. Pie
Well, crap, I’m not sure who won Best Crust OR best Miscellaneous Pie.  Some Piekeeper I am.  Nice memory, jerk.  I know a pie that almost won best Miscellaneous Pie was this latecomer: Chicago Hot Dog Pie!

So go ahead and take a look.  Let the drooling begin.

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The winning pies:

Best Fruit Pie: “Love And Apple Pie” – Dan
There were some amazing fruit pies this year, but a really well-made apple pie is hard to beat. I loved Henry and Sam’s “Blue Velvet,” a peach and blueberry pie with a perfectly made buttery crust. John and Shanna’s “Red Wine Poached Pear Pie” was fabulous as well. It came with a red wine reduction sauce. Accoutrements equals votes. Joanie and Jon’s “Humble Pie” wasn’t so humble in the end. Despite Joanie’s anxiety that skipping the “bake crust before adding filling” step would result in tragedy, the lemon meringue pie turned out pretty dang tasty.

Best Cream Pie: “Little Davey’s Oatmeal Cream Pie Pie” – Jen and Dave
The weirdest thing about this pie is that Matt, who didn’t make it to Piefest this year, talked to me about making this same pie a few weeks ago. It’s a good thing he didn’t come. Can you imagine two giant oatmeal cream pies? Amazingly, the filling tasted exactly right. I made my grandmother’s chocolate fudge pie with a cream cheese crust, which tied for second place along with a late-arriving (but wonderful) chocolate-peanut-butter cream pie.

Best Savory Pie: “Leekie Pie” – Ruth
The savory category is often the most unpredictable. We only had four savory entries this year and they were all pretty yummy. I love how everyone at Piefest grabs a plate and says, “I think I’ll start with the savory pies.” Of course, there could be only one winner, and Ruth’s leek pie took home the prize.

Best Miscellaneous Pie: “Blueberry Pancake with Maple-Bacon Syrup” – Devon and Beth
When this pie walked through the door it was love at first sight. Blueberry pies are my favorite, and then you add a pancake crust?! Are you kidding me? I didn’t even have the maple-bacon syrup and it was still fantastic. Max and Kate’s mysterious “Buttermilk Pie” came in at the last minute and nearly stole the trophy, but fell a couple votes short. Steve and Virginia’s mind-blowing spicy “Mayan Truffle Pie” took this year’s “Don’t Take Too Big A Slice or You’ll Die” award.

Best Crust: “Chocolate Truffle Banana” – Jody
The Best Crust category can go two ways: beauty or taste. I usually vote for the tastiest crust (I picked “Blue Velvet”) but this year the prettiest crust was the overwhelming favorite, featuring dozens of hand-crafted pie-crust leaves.

Best Presentation: “Little Davey’s Oatmeal Cream Pie Pie” – Jen and Dave
Ever since Nick used his Dremel tool to carve a design into a pumpkin and then served a pumpkin pie inside of it, there’s always someone who goes overboard with presentation. This year it was Jen and Dave, whose giant Oatmeal Cream Pie came in its own box with its own logo. As a final touch, it was also individually wrapped. Nice. Shama’s Ridiculous “Cereal Killer” was a distant second, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Most Original: “Cereal Killer” – Shama
This was another runaway category. Shama’s “Cereal Killer” pie was a sight to behold and an endeavor to eat. I think a lot of folks didn’t really know what to do with it. A Rice Krispie treat crust topped with Golden Grahams followed by a layer of banana cream finished with a fruit and cereal melange and served with milk. Jody actually poured the milk over his slice. Why not?

Most Ambitious Pie: “Blueberry Pancake with Maple-Bacon Syrup” – Devon and Beth
This award usually honors conceptual brilliance but lackluster execution — otherwise known as the “Miserable Failure” award. My cantaloupe pie debacle often comes to mind. This year, however, it went to an ambitious pie concept that was actually a success.

Best In Show: “Love And Apple Pie” – Dan
I think one of the honorable mention nominations said it best: “Apple is a hard category to win — basic but good.” But it was better than good. The apples were sliced so perfectly and, well, it was the best pie of the day.

Honorable Mentions:
Every year there is space on the ballot for people to write in honerable mentions. Here are a couple”

We were brainstorming ideas for this year’s Piefest prizes, and I think Shama came up with a good one, but you’ll have to come to Piefest to see what it is. (If you want to come to Piefest, send me an e-mail.) Piefest prizes are usally framed plaques with the name of the award on them. One year they were little 4×6 paintings and one year they were paper cuttings, but last year was my favorite. The prizes were based on weird photos found on the Internet. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Here’s the one for “Best In Show,” although we agonized over it since there were so many other great photos.

This is the photo we almost used for Best In Show. A year later, I kind of like it better. Oh well.

Here’s the award for “Most Ambitious Pie.” I thin it’s the prettiest one we made.

My favorite, however, was the award for “Best Savory Pie”

Some if them we really agonized over. Here’s the one we ended up using:

It narrowly beat out this one:

But this is the one that totally cracked me up:

The award for “Best Miscellaneous Pie” was the most difficult. Here’s what it ended up being:

But it was almost this: