They say we eat with our eyes first, and if that’s true, we’d be so full already just by looking at Karin Pfeiff-Boschek’s spectacular pies.
This talented artist, cook, and photographer assembles sweet pies using her own homemade pastry and embellishes them with intricate designs, making the baked goods almost too pretty to eat. The tarts look glorious in their raw form, but after baking in the oven, they come out looking appetizingly golden and even more beautiful!
Pfeiff-Boschek was raised in a family of bakers, but decorating pies wasn’t her first form of creative expression.
“As a child, I enjoyed seeing, smelling, and eating the breads and pastries that both of my grandmothers made. Baking was traditional in our family in rural Germany, and when I was a young teenager, I began baking cakes and pastries for my brother and sister,” she writes.
Despite having bakers in the family, Pfeiff-Boschek didn’t become one. Instead, she took an interest in fabrics and started designing, dyeing, and making her own textile art. But after learning how to make pies from her American mother-in-law, an idea popped up in her head – what if she combined her culinary skills with her knowledge of design?
Pfeiff-Boschek wondered if pies could be decorated in the way cakes are turned into works of art. So, using her own techniques, she slightly altered her mother-in-law’s original pie recipe and tried chilling the raw pastry in batches.
“I found that by cooling the dough while creating decorations, using a very thin, sharp knife such as a scalpel and working very precisely it was possible to create ornate decorations that held their shape during baking,” she said. “I make it a priority to also show the baked pie because regardless of how beautiful a pie may look before baking, it never will be served in that state and must look good after it comes out of the oven.”
To give the dough color, Pfeiff-Boschek adds powders made from freeze-dried spinach, beetroot, and berries. She usually makes sweet pies containing peaches, apples, and other fruits, although she sometimes bakes a savory version with meat and vegetables. It takes her between two and six hours to finish decorating these gorgeous pies.
From geometric patterns to floral trims, there’s no limit to Pfeiff-Boschek’s imagination when it comes to making pies.
“I love nature, and many of my designs come from time I spend in our garden with our German shepherd dog, Halgrim. I am inspired by trees, leaves, and vines but also by classical geometric patterns and quite mundane articles, such as gully lids,” she said.
She gives her fans a look into her pre- and post-baked pies by sharing them on her Instagram, where she has amassed over 100K followers. Several of her delectable artworks are featured in her book, Elegant Pie. And if you want to try making your own pie art, Pfeiff-Boschek has graciously shared some of her own recipes on her blog!
See more photos of this pastry chef’s amazing pie creations in the gallery below.
