Pie Fight Club: Battle Strawberry

I am pleased to announce the results of the inaugural Pie Fight Club. On Sunday, six brave people helped us assess the contenders and did pronounce a winner.

The first rule of Pie Fight Club: Nobody talks about  their diet at Pie Fight Club.

The second rule of Pie Fight Club: People must want to eat delicous pies.

The third rule of Pie Fight Club: Eat the pies, not throw the pies.

Photos and results after the jump.

First, we set up the scoreboard on the door in the hall. After outlining the title bout, we added the criteria on which the pies would be judged: appearance, crust and filling. The judges would later write their votes out so we could see who won in each category.

Then, I got all thematic and decided to decorate. I always worry that I'm a rotten hostess and people come home from our shindigs all, "The food was terrible! Lisa is a savage! And that house ... if only there were an SPCA for spouses, so that we could call someone to come and take Phil away from his wretched condition! O, how piteous is his current, lowly state!" So I broke out the bud vases, hit the nasturtiums in front of the house, and tried not to worry about whether orange and red clashed.

Once I had done that, it was time to take out the pies.

We purchased four pies for the competition, based on the following logic: First, four is a fine number of pies for eight people. Second, it would be easier on everyone's nerves if we just used store-bought pies instead of asking people to judge each other's handiwork.

So we set up the pies and gave each of them a tag. The idea was to keep the pie vendors' identity anonymous, so that people wouldn't be predjudiced against any one pie-maker. Besides, going by one place -- which helpfully added whipped cream onto the pie without asking us first -- it seemed like the fair thing to do.

Then we put a pot of coffee on, made sure there was a bottle of Niagara for anyone who wanted wine, and waited for the judges.

A few hours later, when we all had distended bellies from multiple slices of pie, we broke it down and rated the pies. Your category winners:

On appearance: Pie D, which won in the "Before" and "After" categories.

On crust: Pie C. (With B and D splitting the remaining votes.)

On filling: Pie D eked out a narrow, one-vote victory over Pie C.

So our overall winner is Pie D (the one looming over the rest in the second photo). Pie A, while initially intriguing for its creamy element, impressed nobody with its leaden crust. Pie B got a lot of favorable comments on its filling, and Pie C really put up a good fight; I have a feeling we'll be seeing more from that baker.

So who were candidates A-D?

Pie A came from Carrows. Pie B came from Coco's Bakery Restaurant. Pie C came from Marie Callender's. And your winner, Pie D, came from Nation's Giant Hamburgers. It's also worth noting that the pies were progressively more expensive -- the Nation's pie cost more than double the Carrows number -- so in this battle, you really did get what you paid for.

Now that we've worked the kinks out of Pie Fight Club, I feel confident that we can expand and offer a bigger, better battle the next go-round. (We will probably also have to move to a bigger, better venue, as eight people is the limit for our living room.) Phil and I are currently debating whether the next go-round will take on another fruit pie -- cherry or blueberry? -- or a creamy pie like lemon meringue. Stay tuned for the next edition of Pie Fight Club.

Comments

[Tracy]

Sounds like a very yummy club. Is it a hard-and-fast rule that the contenders must all be exactly the same kind of pie? Or could you mount, say, "Battle Lemon"... and then have lemon meringue, lemon chess, lemon icebox, lemon chiffon?

[Lisa S.]

Tracy, for the scenario you're describing, I'd go with Pie Madness: a bracketed match-up system with seeding and scoring among limited subsets of party-goers, before we all finally judge the Final Four and the eventual Pie Champion. We could start with the Sweet Sixteen and work our way down.

I imagine you could do a citrus division (lemons, key lime, etc.), a spring/summer fruit division (strawberry, blueberry, cherry, peach), a custard division (coconut, banana, chocolate, Boston cream) and a winter/seasonal division (pumpkin, pecan, apple, etc.) and then eat from there.

*

As for Pie Fight Club, I am sort of reverting to my days as a scientist and trying to reduce as many variables as possible. But I can see where perhaps the next Pie Fight Club iteration might have to look less toward the scientific method (identifying constants, determining what to measure for results) and more toward sports systems with rankings and bouts that rely on both skill and chance.

[Mary-Lynn]

I am so very sorry I missed it!

As for mixing a variety of pies...I see Pie Fight Club as having a long future. Perhaps we could work through a number of single-flavour pies first (say two fruit, two custard, two citrus, two seasonal) each at their own event. Then at the end of the season we bring back the winners for a tournament - citrus vs. fruit and seasonal vs. custard. And then... the final cage match! So each season would have a final winner - Best Pie of the Year.

[verucaamish]

You could also do a stone fruit battle. Peach vs. apricot vs. plum vs. nectarine.

[Erin]

Is whole-strawberry pie an American thing? I'm Canadian and every strawberry pie I've ever made or eaten has contained sliced strawberries. But all four of your contenders are big ol' piles of whole strawberries!

[Kerry]

The best summer pie? Apricot cherry. I dont even like pie, and I cobbled that together for a party and it was wonderful.

[Ky]

I like Mary-Lynn's idea!

[molly]

Omigawd, we just bought a blueberry crumble-crust pie at Whole Foods on Saturday for my husband's birthday. (He is a birthday pie person instead of a birthday cake person. I am not one to quibble with the birthday boy.) I gotta tell ya...it was the *best* *pie* *ever*. You should totally try one at your next Pie Fight Club night. I would love to see what others think of it. Oh and could you include the SPSS output of your results, please Lisa?! Gosh, I need a histogram of the data and a spline describing the associated probability density function approximation.