Page 93 - United States of Pie

Network—but before he entered the program, he had never done
any baking. Larrick now takes his job as kitchen manager seriously.
As manager he is given the pie recipes first, and he diligently bakes

them up before sharing the recipes with the Kitchen’s students. “I
don’t let anyone else [make pies] until I try them out first,” he tells
me.

As we stand around a stainless-steel table, drinking glasses of ice

water from institutional-grade plastic cups, the conversation soon
turns to making dough—the bane of many a baker’s existence. Jen
shares her top-secret family recipe only with the participants of the
program. I think about the camaraderie and the trust that this must
establish between Jen and the members of the Kitchen, how the

recipe is like a secret handshake. While learning the pie recipes is a
task completed by each student individually, “pastry we try to do step
by step,” Jen tells me. “There’s just so much to do, and so much can
go wrong.” But Jen must be doing something right in her teaching,
because Larrick makes a point of telling me, “I know dough like the
back of my hand.”
Over half of all the pies made by the Texas Pie Kitchen come from

recipes either dreamed up by Jen or passed down through her
family. There is the Dr Pepper Pecan Pie, made with soda-fountain
syrup, corn syrup, and pecans; the best-selling German Chocolate
Pecan Pie; and one of Jen’s favorites, Eva’s Strawberry Chocolate
Cream Cheese Swirl Pie, a concoction of strawberries, chocolate
ganache, and cream cheese anchored by a graham cracker crust.

Jen created the pie when she was pregnant with her daughter, Eva.
“I just put together a bunch of stuff I liked,” says Jen. Her easygoing
attitude toward dreaming up pies is in stark contrast to the Kitchen’s