German pie maker, Instagram star creates art for the upper crust
In Germany, a country known more for kuchen than pie, one baker has become a sensation for her design-savvy, Americanstyle pastries.
Karin Pfeiff-Boschek makes three pies each week, posts pictures of them on Instagram — where she has 74,000 followers — and then gives most of them away to friends and charities. Her online pastry portfolio routinely garners thousands of “likes” and fan comments. That’s no surprise, given the stunning appeal of her dough decorations. Her creations, which she says must look good both pre- and post-baked, are embellished with intricate patterns of cut-outs and edible appliqués.
The result is a culinary theatre-in-the-round, starring a butter-pastry cascade of rosettes, hearts, leaves, vines, berries, braids, stars, paisley, perforations, diamonds and dots.
She also produces square and rectangular slab pies, a concept partly spurred by Pi Day (March 14, when the date matches the mathematical ratio) and the formula Pi r squared.
Her kitchen repertoire, like that of most households, reflects family traditions. The photogenic pastries are a marital merger combining Pfeiff-Boschek’s background in textile design with a bit of apple-pie influence from the American Midwest. Her husband, northern Indiana native Bruce Boschek, moved to Germany in the 1960s to study for his PhD. He brought with him lessons in making pie from his mother, who was an awardwinning baker.
“I always liked his apple, rhubarb, pumpkin or blueberry pies,” Pfeiff-Boschek writes in English via email. “At some point, I thought the top crust would offer a good canvas for artistic creation.”
She learned to bake from her mother and grandmothers when she was a girl in central Germany. Now at the age of “60-plus,” Pfeiff-Boschek recalls that “cakes were not so interesting because there are many fantastic cake decorators” in her country, whereas pie decoration was “virtually unknown.” Both cakes and pies have their place, Pfeiff-Boschek says. “I prefer cake with coffee or tea in the afternoon.”
These days, she and her husband both make good use of the generous kitchen in the former abbey where they live in Antrifttal, northeast of Frankfurt. Her pleasure in the pies is less about the fillings than it is about developing a pleasing design: “I treat the dough as a sculptor treats the marble — perhaps not quite as violently.”
Pfeiff-Boschek’s first serious decorative effort was in September 2016. A year later, she attracted high-profile Instagram praise from Martha Stewart, who said she had “turned pie-crust decorating into an art form.”
Like Stewart, Pfeiff-Boschek is a perfectionist.
“To do anything as well as possible is labour-intensive, and my aim in life is to do whatever I do as well as I can,” she says. Her sweet obsession occupies most of her personal time, meaning when she’s not working fulltime as secretary to a depart- ment head at a university.
Producing her vision is a task of almost surgical precision. Her toolbox includes 100-plus cookie cutters and a sharp knife for freehand work.
“I use scalpels with replaceable blades because they are very sharp and thin and cut dough very smoothly and cleanly,” she says.
With time and patience, a pie can be turned into a work of art that will stun your guests when you put it on the table, she says. Presenting a sweet centrepiece is part of what she describes as her life’s emphasis on “creating beautiful surroundings, both in our home and in cooking and baking.”