A Slice of Pie

Nicole Rucker will be at Violet next week, plus a recipe for pie dough

Hey Violet fam!

I’ve got something really magical for you this week. All day next Sunday, June 8^th, Violet will transform into an American pie shop, with cookies and pies lining the shelves and fridges.

Photograph of Nicole © Alan Gastelum

We’re welcoming the incredible pastry chef Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour Pie Shop, all the way from Los Angeles, to host a pop up at the bakery in celebration of her new book, Fat + Flour. In addition to filling our cabinet with her bakes, Nicole and I will have a Q&A at 2pm and she’ll be signing copies of her book afterwards.

We’ll have selections straight from Nicole’s new cookbook including Old Fashioned Sour Cherry Bourbon Pie, Chocolate Chess Pie, East Coast Crunch Cookies and Vegan PB Sandwich Cookies.

Coming from the farm to table style of cooking I was trained in, I’ve always loved a galette but a pie is a different story. They’re a very special thing, a very American thing, and when I was home about a decade ago now, nurturing the seed of what would become Love Is a Pink Cake, I got very into making them for my friends and family and I haven’t really stopped since. In Britain, they feel very seasonal – I make multiple pies for Thanksgiving and of course mince pies at Christmas, but in America they’re year round, abundant, with portions for all and well worth the time they take.

Really though, I’m always searching for that mythical slice of cherry pie in a roadside restaurant like Kyle MacLachlan in Twin Peaks. Do they still exist? Can anyone tell us where they are? Besides at Fat + Flour of course.

I’m sad to say that I think those places don’t exist anymore, but that’s why Nicole’s baking is so special. She takes Americana and nostalgia and then gives it the California professional chef treatment while still leaving in a few throwbacks like instant pudding mix and chicory powder. Nicole isn’t afraid to bake like our grandmothers baked and serve us a huge slice of it.

I’m lucky to have known Nicole for quite some time – since I was pregnant with Frances, actually, and on tour with The Violet Bakery Cookbook. I’d known of her before that, of course, but we’d just exchanged Instagram messages and never properly met. I’d tried to go to one of her former bakeries and not been able to, but on that tour I did a pop up at Gjusta in Venice Beach and Nicole, who had worked there and at Gjelina Take Away, came and brought the famous LA Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold with her. I was blown away, firstly that she’d brought him, secondly that he even wanted to come, and thirdly that the two of them were fans of mine. It felt very humbling and exciting, and of course I loved them both because they liked me.

When I was at Gjusta in 2015 - with Jonathan Gold!

Since then I’ve learned how fun and talented she is in every way, and we’ve remained friends over the years as she’s gone on to make Fat + Flour what it is now, with two locations in LA. I’m so excited that we get to host her and that the team at the bakery gets to cook with her and learn her approach. I know it’s going to be a really good time as we turn our little place into Twin Peaks for the day.

Lastly, if you can make it or not (and I really hope you can!) Nicole has given us permission to share her recipe for pie dough for you to use as you see fit.

See you soon,

Claire x