Bren from Green Bay, WI (2018 Week 5: Pies)

Baker

Bren

Location

Green Bay, WI

Baking Challenge

Hand-Raised Pie

Give your pie a name based on the ingredients and decoration.

Hamming It Up with Cherry, Sweet Potato and Hand Raised Pie

Tell us about your proudest moment – or humble failure – in this week’s baking challenge.

My proudest moment was when I set my pies on the baking shelf of the oven and I thought they were perfect. However, 50 minutes later I was humbled as my pies lay flat in the oven! I should have photographed them before they were baked, no one would believe it looking at them now!

Describe how you added a Wisconsin twist to your creation.

Having never made a hand-raised pie before, I was intrigued to attempt this challenge. The inspiration for this creation began with chopped cherry jam from Lautenbach's Orchard Country in Door County. What better to go with the sweet-tart jam than Midwest-raised ham and sweet potatoes? I pre-roasted the ham and parboiled the sweet potatoes so they would be ready to use as a filling. The dough, which I thought was going to give me a lot of grief after watching the contestants on the show, actually went much better than I expected. I truly thought that everything was going well until I pulled them out of the oven. I believe my fatal flaw was that I did not pack my little dough pots tight enough with the filling so that they would have more to support them while they baked. Lesson learned! On the bright side though, my resident taste testers agreed that they loved the taste of the pie even though it wasn’t much to look at!

How did you do?

Feeling humbled.