This Toronto pastry chef is giving away free pies
If you like pie and free stuff, you might like a pop-up pie shop coming soon to Toronto.
The New Pie Company is the creation of Roncesvalles-based Shiela Labao and baker Miguel Hernandez.
The pop-up doesn't have a location yet but Labao says it will likely be somewhere around Roncesvalles on May 1.
As a way to generate interest in the new endeavour, Labao and Hernandez have a free-pie giveaway contest on Instagram every Friday in April. The two winners will be announced on Saturdays.
Labao said the idea to launch a pie pop-up came, in part, through the extra time she had during lockdown.
Now working from home, the office and human resources manager started making pies during her lunch hour.
"Honestly, baking kept me sane during this whole year of lockdown," she said.
Before the pandemic, she had started a culinary program at George Brown College.
She started doing online pastry workshops and then gave the pies away online. They went fast.
"People started to ask , 'Is this a shop? How can I order?'" she tells blogTO.
So they found a commercial kitchen, Hernandez made a logo, and Labao created the Instagram account three days ago.
The pies are not typical. They range from a peanut butter and strawberry coulis pie to a caramel popcorn pie. Many of the pies are inspired by celebrity chef cookbooks but Labao adds her own twists.
"I dream of a pie and then I try to make it happen, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work," she said.
She uses influences from her roots in the Philippines and Hernadez's in El Salvador.
"We want to bring some of those flavours but in a reimagined way," she says.
While they are excited to bring the pie popup to Roncy, they are respectful of some Toronto pie institutions such as Wanda's Pie in the Sky.
"As much as we say we are going to bring in new pies in Toronto, we don't want to forget the old ones."
But there can never be too many pies.
Courtesy of The New Pie Company
