This venting is occurring on Parkside Avenue (at 50th, in West Philadelphia) where the bake shop of Marie's juggernaut - MyHouse Cookies - was going full tilt one day last week, trays of fresh blueberry pies getting baked off for the weekly Oakmont Farmers Market the next afternoon (Wednesday) in Havertown.
It didn't take spy-work to see what was going in Marie's pies: There were cartons of Jersey blueberries on one pastry table; a full two pounds go in each large-size pie. Boxes of unsalted butter. Flats of fresh eggs. A shaker of cinnamon. Lemon juice. A touch of cornstarch. Pretty much the ingredients of the huckleberry pies her grandmother made up near Scranton, where Marie grew up.
Before continuing (because why continue if the things aren't worth it), let us note that these are wonderful, rustic, juice-stained, lattice-topped fruit pies, their tender real-butter crust recalling aproned grandmas; the fruit's flavor enhanced, not buried; the filling firm and berry-sweet, not runny and syrupy-sweet.
You want to slap a blue ribbon on the pies. Though at Oakmont (or SIW Vegetables, the farmstand in Chadds Ford; or Wolff's Apple House in Lima; or the Swarthmore Co-op Farm Market) the pies tend to get snatched up in high season, which is, well, who needs a blue ribbon? (Six-inchers go for $5.50; the 10-inchers, $12.95.)
The strawberry pies are finishing up, and the rhubarb is fading. Peach is coming on soon. It'll be paired with blackberries eventually. But right now it's blueberry time: "The first seven people," Marie says about her Oakmont sales, "will be blueberry pies."
She started with just cookies six years ago in 300 feet of leased space in the Lower Merion Vocational Training Center in Wynnewood, which explains the MyHouse Cookies name.
