Pie Fest 2025. Photo by Olya Vysotskaya

It may be that you find yourself here because of some interest in the Shaker Lemon Pie I made for Pie Fest at Stissing House.

Since applying to Pie Fest, a number of people have asked me if I am a person who does baking competitions and whether I plan to enter more of them. I have found this strange because I did not know that being on the baking competition circuit was a thing (is there a baking competition circuit??). Are there people who spend all their free time at baking competitions? The idea that I would participate in more than one of these things had not occurred to me. It was only ever about a chance to perfect a recipe and see whether I was right about my hunch that some A-list judges would be there.

I heard about Pie Fest last July and entered because I knew Clare de Boer would assemble a panel of judges whose taste I shared and who would evaluate my pie with the sort of instincts I respect. I did not think twice about which recipe I would make. For the last decade-and-a-half of making Shaker Lemon Pie, everyone who has tasted it has remarked on how memorable, distinctive, and delicious it is. Why would I make anything else? I decided I would give it a shot and set about practicing a bit to be sure that every aspect of it was as good as it could be.

But I do not like baking, per se. I like the satisfaction of mastering a technique or skill, especially if it is difficult. I like getting to the point where I stop fretting about its difficulty, but that is not to say that it becomes easy so much as I become friends with the difficulty of it. I want to understand it in a practical, manual way, not just conceptually. Baking for me is just one of many means to comprehending the world.

That’s a roundabout way of saying that I do not see myself doing any more baking competitions unless it turns out that Martha Stewart is a judge, because who else is more qualified to decide that someone has aced a recipe? As a child I watched her television show every day, probably to some detriment (either mine or others’), and with her blessing upon this pie I can die happy.

My name is Lauren Hildreth, and I occasionally bake pies, cakes, and whatever else may seem right in the moment. I also make other art, which I may publish here at some point should the stars align. On more than one occasion I have been called a cockeyed optimist, and that is an accusation I accept.

My spouse Matthew and I live with our four reasonably well behaved cats in the Hudson Valley, where we moved last year after many years in New York. If you would like to work together in some capacity or otherwise be in touch, you can email me. I am not always prompt in replying, so if you have a deadline please share it!

Ever yours,

Lauren

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