Pie and Prejudice (Against Butter)

Baharat Pumpkin Pie, Memories of Mom, and the Sharsheret Bake Sale

My mother was not a pie baker. Maybe it was because she grew up knowing how delicious butter could be, yet we didn’t use it in our kosher home. We were a margarine family. She called Fleishman’s non-dairy margarine “Switzerland,” meaning it was Pareve. Neutral. Could be used with either meat or dairy dishes, whereas butter could not. And margarine didn’t make the best pie crusts. This was decades before “buttery sticks” and Miyoko’s creamery cultured cashew butter, solid coconut oil and all the modern improvements that make kosher baking much easier and more delicious. So maybe she just skipped it.

I also had a bit of a pie blind spot until my sister and I started baking them in 2008. Our mother, Steffi, and grandmother, Ann, had both died of ovarian cancer in recent years, and we were looking for a joyous and philanthropic way to commemorate our matriarchs—and help women who were living with the same diagnosis.