January 23rd is National Pie Day. If you have free time today, bake a pie. It can be sweet or savory (pot pie, shepherd’s pie, vegetable pie, etc.)

February 23rd is National Pie Day, an annual celebration of pies launched in the mid-1970s by Charlie Papazian, a nuclear engineer, brewer and teacher from Boulder, Colorado.

He also founded the Association of Brewers and the Great American Beer Festival, and wrote The Complete Joy of Home Brewing.

He must have been a major pie enthusiast as well, since he declared his birthday, January 23rd, to be National Pie Day.

Papazian is currently 70 years old, and we hope he enjoys slices of his favorite pies today.

News of the “holiday” spread (in those pre-social media days). Since 1986, National Pie Day has been sponsored by the American Pie Council, which holds its National Pie Championships every spring. The competition is open to amateur, professional and commercial bakers.

The American Pie Council is an organization committed to “preserving America’s pie heritage and promoting America’s love affair with pies.” Membership in America’s only purely pie-focused national organization is open to all.
 
 
WHAT ABOUT PI DAY?

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th, a date that corresponds to the first numbers of the mathematical constant, pi.

If you’ve forgotten high school math, pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The number is constant, no matter what the size of the circle.

The first 10 digits of pi are 3.1415926535. Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point.

For March 14th, bakers and mathematicians alike have fun baking pi-themed pies (photo #3).
 
 
TREAT YOURSELF TO A VIEW OF PIE AS ART

For a dazzling view of the most impressive pie art, take a look at the work of Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, also known as The Pieous.

Check out her website, Pies Are Awesome (photos #1 and #2).
 
 
THE HISTORY OF PIE

Who created the first pies? Here’s the scoop.
 
 
FIND ALL THE TYPES OF PIES IN OUR PIE GLOSSARY.
 
THE HISTORY OF PIE

AMERICA’S FAVORITE PIES

HAVE FUN DECORATING PIES

[1] The Eiffel Tower pie.

[2] A pie portrait of Betty White (both photos by The Pieous | Pies Are Awesome).

[3] For Pi Day, March 14th, bakers have fun riffing on the pi symbol (center of pie). The first 10 digits of pi are 3.1415926535. Here’s the recipe from The Instructables.

[1] An elegant two-crust blueberry pie, with a sprinkle of decorating sugar (photo courtesy King Arthur Flour).

[2] Cut-outs are an easy way to decorate a one-crust pie (photo courtesy American Pie Council).

January 23rd is National Pie Day, a celebration for pie lovers everywhere.

Few of us would pass up a piece of pie because it had a plain top crust. In fact, bring it here right now, and a cup of coffee, too.

But if you’re a pastry artist like Lauren Ko of LoKo Kitchen, every pie top is a canvas, every pie an opportunity to create a new work of art. See her Instagram page for even more beauties.

Consider then twelve pies below. Some have top crusts, some don’t.

Each has its own personality, made with:

 
For two crust pies, lattice and cut-outs (photo #2) have long been popular. The top crust lends itself to all sorts of craft work.
 
There’s even more of a canvas with a one-crust pie, such as:

 
Some one-crust contenders, like chess pie, pecan pie and tarte Tatin, are already so sweet that a counterpoint of crème fraîche, slightly sweetened sour cream or slightly sweetened/unsweetened whipped cream is a better choice.

Others, like Bavarian cream pie, black bottom pie and nesselrode pie, already have too much going on up top.

[3] Twelve beautiful pie tops by Lauren Ko, @LokoKitchen.

January 22nd is National Blondie Day, a confection also called blond brownies and butterscotch brownies. (To add to the confusion, May 9th is National Butterscotch Brownie Day.)

The shape and texture are similar to chocolate brownies, but the ingredients are different.

 
Blondies tend not to be frosted, since the brown sugar is sweet enough. However, chocolate ganache is a nice (if messier) alternative to chocolate chips (photo #3). Since the beginning of recent food trends, some bakers use salted caramel ganache or dulce de leche.

Blondies differ from white chocolate brownies, since the latter have white chocolate in the batter. We’ve encountered some blondies with chocolate chips called Congo Bars, but accurately, Congo Bars have both chocolate chips and walnuts; coconut can be substituted the walnuts.

Like brownies, blondies are bar cookies cut into rectangles or squares. They’re great as a base for a sundae, topped with butterscotch, caramel or chocolate sauce.

We know the history of brownies, but where did blondies originate?
 
 
THE HISTORY OF BLONDIES

Like brownies, blondies originated in the U.S. We’re just not absolutely certain of their creator.

As bar cookies evolved in the late 19th century, molasses was a popular sweetener. Molasses bars were a popular treat.

The first person publish a recipe for the brownies we know today was Fanny Farmer, in the 1896 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (the history of brownies).

But that recipe contained no chocolate; it was essentially what we today call a Blondie.

According to Food Timeline, blonde brownies predate the chocolate version by about 10 years. Around 1896, a molasses-flavored bar cookie (no chocolate, cocoa or chocolate chips) called a brownie appeared. The name celebrated the elfin characters called Brownies, created by Palmer Cox and featured in popular books, stories, cartoons and verses of the time (the Eastman Kodak Brownie camera was also named after these elves).

According to another source, in the 1906 edition of her cookbook, Farmer published an updated version of her cookbook that included a blondie recipe and a brownie recipe, both called brownies. Alas, we’ve only been able to get our hands on the 1896 version, reprinted and available on Amazon (link above), so we can’t do our own fact-checking.

After the later introduction and popularity of chocolate brownies, the molasses brownies became known as blonde brownies. Subsequently, some bakers started to substitute brown sugar for the molasses, providing a butterscotch taste and a new name, butterscotch brownies.

[1] Blondies with pecans, served with dulce de leche. Blondies can have a finer crumb (texture) if cake flour is used instead of all-purpose flour (photo courtesy Valrhona).

[2] A classic, rustic blondie with chocolate chips and walnuts (photo courtesy King Arthur Flour).

[3] Blondies iced with chocolate ganache, at Baked NYC.

Although we grew up in the food wonderland that is New York City, we don’t recall seeing a blondie or a butterscotch brownie until the mid 1970s or early 1980s.

Then, some time around then, an artisan bakery whose name, alas, we can’t remember (and is no longer in business) began selling packaged blondies, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and other baked beauties in small grocery stores and delis. The line was superior to anything else being sold—and we believe that they introduced New York to blondies on a commercial scale.

If you’re that bakery and are reading this, tell us your name…and thanks for the memories!
 
 
BLONDIE RECIPES