You want to buy a pie, don't you?

I tend to gauge how well I did at the market based on whether my pies sell or not. It's probably an inaccurate measurement, but since they are my highest priced item, when they don't sell, it hurts. This past Monday, only one of them sold. In fact, I was panicked about my HappyJacks selling that I texted a friend that I knew would be interested in buying some to see if she wanted me to bring her one home (of course, she requested two; I was relieved).


The day started off kind of slow. The crowd was there; they just weren't buying what I was selling. At one point, I had this woman stop by my booth that had never been to the market before. Usually first-timers are very curious about what I do, where I do it, and how I manage to stay so thin (bless their hearts for telling me I'm so skinny... these are words that I have NEVER heard in my life, and might actually be starting to believe now that strangers are saying it). She asked a lot of questions about my cookies, and seemed very intrigued by my pies. She thought they looked fabulous, but I was her first stop so she wanted to look around, and promised to come back. I can totally understand not wanting to buy a pie at the beginning of your shopping trip, because then you'd have to carry it around. But, I was skeptical that she'd be back, so I said kindly, "I hope you stop back!" She assured me that she would, but she didn't. I lost a sale. I don't know if she ended up buying from the Amish or what, but she didn't buy anything from me. Wah-wah.


In the end, Jack (the Jack of HappyJack... the one I make happy with all my baked goods) was very happy because he's been dying for me to have leftover pie. Pies don't keep to the next week, so we have to eat them or give them away when they don't sell. It was good that we got to eat this one, though. It reminded me of what the heat does to the topping on my pies—it makes them super soft. They're chock full of butter, and in that heat, they just get soft, and almost gooey. It's not the lovely crisp texture that they're supposed to have. So I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm considering refrigerating the pies this week so that they're nice and cool when I take them to the market, so that when they're out in the heat, it's more about them getting to room temperature, and hopefully the butter stays in tact longer. I've also considered freezing them before I bake them, and sell them frozen. I'm not sure this is a good solution, though, because part of what makes them so good is knowing for how long to bake them. And that's not something I can easily convey to someone off the street buying an unbaked pie. How long they bake it could make or break how good the pie is. It's almost like a loss of quality control if I leave the baking up to the buyer, and I don't think I want to take that chance.


All in all, though, even though I didn't sell one of my two pies, I sold most everything else. I only had 6 packs of cookies left, and that's pretty good. I wasn't happy with how my chocolate chip cookies turned out this week, so we ate those three packs (well, Jack ate them, and gave some away). The other three were cinnasnappers, and those freeze very well, so we'll try to sell those again this coming week. If they don't sell then, well, then we get to eat them (again, when I say "we", I mean mainly people other than me—don't get me wrong, I'd love to eat them all as they're one of my favorites, but because of that, if I eat one, I'll eat all six in a pack; I must stay away).


Also, a new thing I tried last week was making double the dough that I needed for each of my cookies. For some of them, I actually made the balls of dough and froze the balls, so when I was ready to bake them, all I had to do was defrost them a bit on the counter, then put the balls on the cookie sheets and bake. This saved a lot of time for this coming week's market. I was able to bang out all of my cookies on Thursday in a short amount of time. So today, I'm mostly working on pies and HappyJacks.


In less than a week, I'm doing a baking demonstration at the Whitehall Public Library. I'll be showing the class how to make my Chocolate Chip Snowballs, as well as a strawberry pie that I make. The class is free, so if you're interested, sign up and join me!


Until next time.... have a yummy day!