Straight off the cooling rack, the pie hit all the right notes. Its filling was gooey and sweet, full of chewy chunks of apple, its Dutch-style crust crumbly and buttery, with pleasant herbal overtones. This pie wouldn’t have been out of place at a family picnic or Thanksgiving dinner — if not for the fact that it was packed to the rim with marijuana.
We’d decided to bake a weed-infused pie in order to do our bit for the upcoming Denver County Fair.
Inspired by Colorado’s legal-weed wave, earlier this year the fair announced it would have a pot pavilion that put a stoner spin on traditional county fair festivities, complete with Grateful Dead karaoke and a prize for the best marijuana plant. In the months leading up to the fair, the buzz around the pot component grew big enough that organizers axed a planned beer pavilion and doubled the area devoted to cannabis.
But then we heard that the fair was having trouble attracting entries for its edibles competition. We took the news as a challenge: We were going to take home a blue ribbon by giving the judges the best (and possibly only) pot pastry they had ever tasted. Affirming our choice, our boss agreed to cover the entry fee.
Deciding what to make was easy. The county fair is an institution in this country, a symbol of bucolic, family-friendly Americana, and now Denver’s fair was welcoming legal marijuana into its tent. What better way to celebrate than with a pot-infused version of that most American of desserts, apple pie?
Read more of Adam Roy’s tale over at Cafe Society.