Having flown in on a turbulent redeye that morning, I hadn’t slept in nearly thirty hours and was seeing stars. Literally. I was elbows deep in flour and totally overwhelmed by a fancy test kitchen full of equipment I didn’t know how to use when Martha Stewart sauntered by.
“Oh! You’re the crazy pie lady! Your work is beautiful!” If I was barely functional before, I was definitely dead now. Was this real life?
She continued, “I’m really looking forward to learning from you. I have not been able to figure out how you construct your intricate designs! I can’t wait!” Then she floated on, leaving me stuttering in her wake.
Seriously, though. I’m a self-taught, hobbyist home baker who stumbled into pie baking because I was unemployed and bored of making blueberry muffins. I made my first pie in late 2016, and I started with a cracked pie plate, a small paring knife, and a cookie sheet.
A few months later, preparing to bake in the presence of a culinary icon, I still hadn’t made many upgrades. I mean, I now had a ruler and a pastry wheel, both of which were the cheapest versions I could source online, and I had graduated to disposable foil pie tins. Things couldn’t have been more snoring and understated if I tried.
So how does a regular person like me even end up here—as a social media personality with a cult following—in New York, trying not to pass out from fatigue and shock?
HERE WE DOUGH, FROM THE BEGINNING.
I hail from a family of phenomenal eaters. The kind of insane people who sit down to a casual eight-course lunch and, before even taking their first bite, begin to discuss plans for dinner. I heartily ate my way through childhood, surrounded by gourmet home cooks and snack enthusiasts alike. I was immersed in equal parts fragrant seafood paella and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. There were both glossy caramel flans and boxed brownie mixes.
I could assemble shrimp ceviche in my sleep and bake off dozens of chewy chocolate chip cookies, and I even made my own wedding cake.
But pie? Nope. Too scary. Too much work. In fact, I don’t have any recollection of anyone in my family ever making a pie. We left that to Marie Callender.
So fall of 2016 rolls around. I’m newly settled in Seattle, with a surplus of free time as I prowl for a job. And to really drive home the point that I had no professional kitchen experience whatsoever, I was a social worker turned nonprofit executive assistant. How about that eight-to-five office grind?
One night while blooping around on the Internet, I stumbled across some beautiful photographs of pies on Pinterest. The pies were layered with floral and foliage cutouts, and they stunned me with their detailed charm. Spellbound by the prospect of using pie as an art medium, I suddenly wondered if I too could master pie. Determined to overcome my (unfounded, as it turns out) anxiety toward pie dough, I set out to conquer my fear. But the romantic, feminine aesthetic of bakers like Julie Jones and Jo Harrington wasn’t for me, and the only decorative implement I had on hand anyway was a giant T-Rex cookie cutter. So, by default—straight lines. A simple plaid lattice apple pie was my first attempt and it was fine.
A month later, I made my second pie and brought it to Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws’ house. I was so proud of the intricate grid pattern I had painstakingly crafted out of dough on top. Horrifyingly, the inside was a runny disaster. The marionberry filling was overly juicy and the bottom crust completely undercooked. The back seat of our car looked like a gruesome crime scene. My husband’s wonderful parents kindly insisted on eating their slices as I sat by mortified. That was the end of my pie pilgrimage.
Or so I thought.
Fast forward a year, to August 29, 2017, when, worried that I was becoming that friend who was flooding her personal Instagram account with food photos (Here’s me on a hike! Here are seven galettes and a summer salad. Here’s my dog! Here are five hundred pies!), I started a separate account, @lokokitchen. Intending to use it just as a holding place for pictures of the food I was making, I began with about one hundred followers—my husband, my baby cousin, and a few people from high school I hadn’t talked to in years.
Thanks to an obnoxious abundance of summer produce and an ambitious orchard trip that saw me home with ten pounds of cherries, I found myself baking pies anew. I had tired of muffins again and was now far enough removed from the trauma of Piesaster 2016 to attempt a return to pastry. At the very least, it was an excellent way to use up large quantities of fruit. My first Lokokitchen Instagram post was a peach pie with an abstract geometric design I carved using my paring knife, with a cookie sheet as a straight-edge guide. My technique was unwieldy and impractical, but I didn’t know any better, and I was quite pleased with the result. Six hundred people on the Internet were, too. What. Cue the shock.
Over the subsequent weeks, I continued to post pictures of my baking forays. I used my older-generation iPhone to take photographs and a ten-dollar chalkboard from Home Depot as my backdrop. Much to my bewilderment, I gained followers steadily—strangers I didn’t know from anywhere who were apparently interested in my pies. Then I published a photo of a blueberry pie with what has now become my signature spoke design (Spoke Signals). I hit 1,000 followers, and my brain exploded.
A month after that, Design Milk reposted one of my photos to their Instagram account, and I skyrocketed to more than 12,000 followers, gaining 8,000 in one day. I hadn’t even heard of Design Milk before that point, but they had an audience of 1 million people, and the exposure launched me fully into the public eye.
It was the beginning of all hell baking loose—the insanity otherwise known as “going viral.” From there, outlets like Food52, O magazine, BuzzFeed, and Vogue shared my photos on their platforms and wrote features about my unusual style. People everywhere responded overwhelmingly, and things continued to snowball.
Over the next year, I proceeded to make and share my pies and tarts, racking up more than 200,000 followers. Local and international news agencies reached out for interviews. Large social media accounts promoted my content on their platforms. BuzzFeed Tasty brought me into their studio to film, and the video immediately trended in the top 10 on YouTube, hitting 12 million views on Facebook within a week. I started holding workshops in Seattle and flying to events around the country. I quit my full-time office job, if only to dig myself out of the enormous email cavern of people imploring me to sell pies, and to reclaim my weekends, which had become marathon baking sessions.
Not even pairing a pie photo with a caption about pooping my pants as an adult (twice!) deterred people from following my baking adventures.
SO HERE WE ARE.
There is a shroud of mystery surrounding my pie art, since I haven’t widely shared my techniques or recipes, and the general impression is that one must be both a world-renowned pastry chef and a theoretical mathematician to execute the designs. Let’s be clear—I am neither. I am simply a humble nerd puttering around in her home kitchen.
Despite a lack of professional culinary, pastry, or design training, and the fact that I’ve always been miserable at math, I’ve spawned an entire movement of modern geometric pie design around the world. All this is to really say, I’ve somehow managed to trick millions of eyeballs into thinking that I perform some sort of otherworldly sorcery with dough as my medium and insanity as my muse.
But now the secret’s out. My techniques are straightforward and far easier than you think. You don’t need wizard wands or expensive butter made from the milk of royal cows in the hinterlands. Just time, patience, and a bit of crumbtion.
I’m that lady who couldn’t figure out how to fit the lid on the food processor in Martha Stewart’s kitchen. Also, I failed calculus. But I can make geometric pie art, and so can you. Whether you’re a seasoned food professional, a curious home baker, or an enthusiastic eater, there’s a slice for everyone. Let’s get this tarty started.
ROLL UP THOSE SLEEVES.
This book is organized into two parts: Tarts and Pies. Each section starts with a compendium of crust and dough recipes, which can often be mixed and matched with other fillings within its tart or pie grouping. Designs can also be implemented interchangeably. I provide recommendations on alternate pairings and substitutions after each design tutorial, but ultimately, this book is structured with the hope that you will make these creations entirely your own. Experiment with crust, filling, and design medleys. Play with colors and flavors. Dive headlong into this pie life for yourself. I can’t wait to see where it takes you!
If you’re new to baking or pie design, Truth or Square or Mother of Swirl make solid first forays. They’re surefire bets for getting your feet wet before venturing into the deep end with more complicated undertakings, like Seeing Is Beweaving.