Helen Nugent - Pie Style

Founder of Pie-Eyed Girl
Photography by James Brand

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To Stephen and Maeve, who taught me anything is possible.
To Jim, Devlin and Liam for making everything possible.

One of the questions Im asked most often is how I learned to bake and decorate pies. The quick and easy answer is, I learned from my mother. But its a bit more complicated than that.

My mother was a 1970s stay-at-home mom who raised five daughters while my father worked long hours at the local hospital as a doctor. That meant that while we were at school, she had time for things like baking. And she was good at it. So good, in fact, that she refused to allow anything that came out of a package (as she liked to say) come through our front door. And while my sisters and I could occasionally cajole her into a family trip to a fast-food restaurant, neverand I do mean neverwas the rule relaxed for baked goods. So, while my friends were throwing another pop tart in the toaster and separating their Oreos, I was eating freshly baked bread, cookies straight from the oven and, yes, lots of homemade pies. And I had absolutely no appreciation for it. I wanted Twinkies and Betty Crocker mixes and anything else that came in bright, shiny packaging with lots of preservatives.

Today, I am so grateful to my mother for holding her ground, because it encouraged my sisters and me to start baking. And while it was often pure chaos in our kitchen on a Saturday morning as we practiced our fledgling baking skills, we came to recognize when a cake layer was ready to come out of the oven, what a stiff meringue looked like and how to bake a simple but delicious apple pie. And we learned it all from a baker who learned it from her mother. Who learned it from her mother. Methods and techniques passed down with great love from one generation of bakers to the next.

My baking journey has taken a few detours since my childhood culinary education. I went to college for fashion design but changed course and spent years as an instructional designer and corporate writer in my own business, working mainly for pharmaceutical and food industries. Whether you needed to know the benefits of the latest migraine medication or the proper way to bake a donut, I was your girl. It was a rewarding career, but I was getting restless. The hours were long. The business was changing. So, I did what anyone in my position would doI started baking pies.

I know. It made no sense, but what started as a mild Pinterest obsession with latticed pies turned into an Instagram account where I found a creative outlet for designs and ideas I didnt even know I had. That turned into an opportunity to collaborate with the Food Network, which led to opportunities to teach pie making and decorating. Still, I felt like I should be looking for a real job. Then my father died unexpectedly. In shock, I retreated to the kitchen and just baked pie after pie. I know now that it was my way of processing his death and everything he had meant to me. And, after a while, things came back into focus. I was going to follow this pie journey to see where it led. This book is the next step on that path.

My goal with this book is to share what I know about pie decorating and to inspire you to bake a beautiful pie of your own, regardless of your skill level. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different element of pie making and decorating, from working with pie dough ( .

, youll find lots of information about general pie-making techniques including rolling out dough, lining a pie plate and blind baking a pie shell. Youll also learn how to braid, lattice and make a decorative edge.

Of course, a pie cant just look beautiful; it has to taste delicious as well.