Roseville's Princess of Pie

Close your eyes and imagine what the winner in the apple pie competition at the recent Minnesota State Fair might look like. Do you see a grey-haired, flour-smudged, apron-wearing granny type?

You're correct only as to gender.

Taking the blue ribbon was 24-year-old Roseville resident Andrea Warda, a second-year law student at Hamline University, who had never entered an apple pie in the Fair before.

"I was floored when I heard I won," she said with a giggle.

I know how she feels. As a young bride, I knit a pair of Nowegian sweaters for my new hubby and me, and on a whim, entered them in the Fair. I was just as shocked as Andrea when I saw my sweaters with a purple sweepstakes ribbon attached.

Over the years, I entered other knit items in the Fair, but never again matched that purple pinnacle.

Andrea, however, will probably win more first and even sweepstakes prizes in the future because she has pie baking techniques that the judges can't help but love.

Speaking of the judging, Shirley Barber of Roseville who co-chaired this year's baking and canning division, said that Warda won in a field of 49 apple pie entries.

May I modestly say that's nothing, as far as numbers go.

Years ago, I was asked to judge the Lake City Harvest Festival Apple Pie Contest, and apparently every farm wife within 40 miles entered. Two hundred pies, two pairs of judges, and I initially had to taste a hundred. After the first 50 or so, any with burnt crusts or sunken centers were sampled sparingly, and by the time we had plowed through all 100, I was pie-paralyzed, wanting nothing more than to bolt out the door.

But then the contest organizers said each team should bring their top 10 pies to the finalists' tables, and I had to taste 20 more. I didn't touch apple pie for four years!

Whoever was assigned to the apple pie division at the Fair had only to taste the 25 best looking ones, and when Warda entered, her goal was to make that cut.

"I stood in line for an hour waiting to turn my pie in, and there were a lot that looked pretty good," she said.  

Her winning entry was not the traditional two-crust version. Instead, she topped her filling with a Dutch-style struesel mixture. Her recipe blends several concepts she's collected over her baking career, and it even has a bit of apple crisp character.

Warda comes from a family of cooks and bakers. She learned from her grandmother, Patricia Blackmer who lives in Michigan where Andrea was born, and from her mother, Robyn Rasmusson who now lives in Crookston. Her dad, Bob Warda of Rochester, "taught me about spices," she says.

Growing up, Andrea lived in Rochester, and then Texas, where as a very young cook, she entered the pie baking division of barbecue competitions, earning two first place finishes there.

Back in Minnesota to study law, she set her sights on the Minnesota State Fair. Though she is keeping her winning recipe secret, she shared the technique that earned her top honors.

The bottom crust of her entry was a classic lard dough made with all-purpose flour. 

"My mother taught me not to overhandle it." She rolls from the center outwards, and even if the crust should crack when placed in the pie pan, she knows how to patch it seamlessly.

"I always keep my crust mixture cold before rolling," she say. In fact, she makes that dough the day before baking so it can fully chill.

Granny Smith is her preferred apple, the only variety she used in her filling.

"I've moved so much in my life that I'm always learning how to use a new oven," she said. "They don't all bake evenly."

Warda rotates the pan if her oven has hot spots, and she also protects the pastry rim with strips of foil to prevent over-browning.

When she bakes a two-crust pie, she has a brilliant technique. To the upper crust dough, before rolling, she adds cinnamon or nutmeg, perhaps a touch of sugar, so it has extra flavor. "And it smells so good when it's baking," she added.

Her advice: "Don't be afraid to experiment with seasonings. Try different combinations." She's not slavish to measuring spoons, judging more by taste.

Warda has always been the designated dessert person for parties and family gatherings, but now she has to bring pies to friends who heard of her triumph, and even to her fellow Hamline law students.

After conquering apple, her new mission is to polish another fruit pie recipe, hoping to get another blue or even the sweepstakes. The $8 premium she won was nice, but "I like the ribbon and the prestige of it, the bragging rights," she said.

Warda hasn't decided what field of law she'll pursue, But if a legal life isn't satisfying enough, she and her mother, who both are cake decorators, would like to open up a pie and cake shop.

This 24-year-old will have the credentials for either career.