By Brenda Clough

Now this is better!

This is an open-face blueberry pie.  I cut the letters out of pie dough and transferred them carefully to the surface of the pie.  Unfortunately blueberries do not lie very flat, and we have this bubbly lumpy effect that makes the letters uneven.  However, I think we can agree it is very legible!  Painting all the piecrust with beaten egg gives us this golden shiny effect which is so pretty.

This is pretty well near satisfactory — I don’t think that I can do better with blueberries as a base. When I come to bake a veal-and-ham pie, in August, I will take one more run at it.  That pie will be a solid flat crust, with letter-shaped holes cut in it. I may even resort to my pastry letter wheel again, since it is difficult to cut small holes with a knife — the letters you see here were built with strips of dough. I am not yet clear in my mind how letters like “O” and “B”, with their internal space, will work out, but in theory it should turn out fine.  Because all the meats lie flat I should be able to get the crust as smooth as a tabletop.  And with dexterity a veal-and-ham pie is a handsome object indeed.

My newest novel Speak to Our Desires is out exclusively from Book View Café.

I also have stories in Book View Cafe’s two steampunk anthologies, The Shadow Conspiracy and The Shadow Conspiracy II, as well as in BVC’s many other anthologies, including our latest, Beyond Grimm.