Adrianna Gallo, a baker and photographer from Richmond, took the top prize in Sunday’s second annual Cville Pie Fest.
Gallo’s pear-cranberry pie with gingersnap crumb topping was chosen as this year’s best in show, beating out 17 other pies entered by bakers from across Central Virginia.
“I’m so excited,” Gallo said, as her victory was announced. “I feel like I’m in the Oscars!”
Rowena Morrel, one of the pie fest’s judges and editor of online cooking magazine In the Kitchen, praised Gallo’s pie’s flavor and technical skill. Pear pies often “weep,” she said, and get too watery and soggy.
“It’s a beautiful pie, and not an easily made pie, because of the texture of the pears,” she said. “Very well done.”
Gallo said her secret is to choose pears that are firm, as opposed to being ripe or soft to the touch.
The Cville Pie Fest grew out of a throwdown competition in May 2009 between Marijean Jaggers, who blogs at STLWorkingMom.com, and Brian J. Geiger, a food science writer who blogs at TheFoodGeek.com.
Jaggers and Geiger both asserted over Twitter that they were the Charlottesville area’s best pie baker, so they held a “Pie Down” to settle the matter. Geiger’s bourbon cream pie and double strawberry open-faced pie won the match and Geiger was crowned the “Best Pie Baker in Charlottesville.”
A few months later, they decided to open the competition up to everyone and organized the inaugural Cville Pie Fest, which was held last fall in Crozet.
Kathy Banner, an administrator at Martha Jefferson Hospital, won last year’s pie fest with a lemon chiffon pie.
Banner’s chocolate raspberry chiffon was the third runner up in this year’s pie fest, having been chosen as the best in the cream/chiffon/mousse pie category.
Jaggers won second place in this year’s overall competition for her butterscotch pecan pie, which won the fest’s nut category.
Geiger, the pie fest’s head judge, also awarded a “judge’s select” prize to his personal favorite entry, a Caramel Green Tomato Pie made by Elena Rosemond-Hoerr.
The runner-up in the fruit category was Sherice Page for her Amazing Apple Pie. The runner-up in the cream/chiffon/mousse was Waynesboro resident Mary Martin’s Mary’s Famous Quiche.
For winning first place, Gallo took home a gift pack from the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport that included an iPod Touch and a copy of Mollie Cox Bryan’s “Mrs. Rowe’s Little Book of Southern Pies.”
Bryan served as part of the Cville Pie Fest’s judging panel.
Proceeds from the Cville Pie Fest — raised from $1 samplings of the entries and from a silent auction for pies — will be donated to PACEM, an interfaith collaboration of Charlottesville-area congregations that help the homeless find shelter in the winter months.
Colleen Keller, PACEM’s executive director, said last year’s pie fest raised roughly $1,300 for the organization. This year, about $500 was raised.
“Pie is such a warm, comfortable thing,” she said. “And the proceeds go directly toward helping people stay warm and comfortable.”
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