( ode to the almighty oley pie & over-sized cookie )

( ode to the almighty oley pie & over-sized cookie )

by marian wolbers

pies are more art than cookies. cookies are just clever. – felicia fisher, owner, black buggy baking company, oley, pennylsvania.

felicia fisher bakes.

   

in the countryside of oley, pennsylvania, right here, right now, even as soft breezes waft across the valley, and late-spring rainshowers sprinkle rich earth that will become wheat and corn in the months ahead, fisher is up before dawn: she’s tossing around silky-fresh flour and mellow, milky-fresh butter, and moistening the mix till it’s ‘chust’ perfectly ready to start becoming a pie. actually, make that 40 to 50 pies.

    

it’s pie and cookie season once again at fisher’s farm fresh produce, where a green acres gal from long island, a lawyer-turned-baker and mom-of-three named fisher, happily and lovingly churns out handmade baked goods under the moniker of black buggy baking company.

     

never mind her sordid past helping wealthy people ‘stick it’ to other wealthy people; bbbc appears to be salvation not only for the baker but for all her devoted customers who are known to queue up next to the boyertown farmers’ market stand or the west reading farmers’ market where, on weekends, husband kirk fisher garnishes his own just-picked produce with supersized cookies, fruit pies, zucchini, banana, or pumpkin breads (depending on the  season), and any sort of goodie that strikes his wife’s culinary fancy.

…and fisher’s fancy is always in season. along with two addictive standards, vanilla sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies, the baker is now creating a margarita cookie. “i just started thinking about margaritas one day,” she mused, as though baking possessed a mystical element that inspires. she’s now consumed with putting together the perfect combination of lime, caramel and sea salt. in a cookie shape, that is.

     

bbbc’s shoofly pie is always cooling somewhere on a rack in the 1800s summer kitchen at the fisher farmstead. fisher’s website quotes one fan whose sugary praise pronounces her ‘the goddess of shoofly pie !’

     

there are many other pies, though, including blueberry, apple, pecan, raisin walnut, peach, apple, cherry, pumpkin, and more, with crumbly tops or flaky latticework.

     

the secret ingredients in black buggy’s yummy success are pretty simple, said the owner. first and foremost, she loves what she’s doing. people claim her baked goods make them just plain happy. “it’s comfort food. it’s traditional. every pie has been hand-rolled.” as she labors, often starting at 3 in the morning, she enters ‘the zone,’ a sweet place to be.

( all photographs by marian wolbers )     

bbbc is constantly tinkering with recipes, too; many come from time-tested texts, like the farm wives of america cookbook.

     

the kids have happy jobs, too: they taste-test.

     

lastly, bbbc loves all that’s fresh and local (if frocal was a word, fisher would use it). mennonite neighbors supply aromatic herbs for her famous lemon rosemary cookies, while the baking flour all comes from fm brown’s, in fleetwood. fisher loves the fact that not only is the flour priced right, but “it’s milled only a day or two prior to my baking, so it’s my husband’s and my neighbors’ wheat that goes into my creations.”

    

even her chocolate chip supplier is from pennsylvania. and now her rhubarb—for rhubarb and strawberry-rhubarb pies !—is within grabbing distance, planted by a devoted husband whose family goes back 8 generations in these parts. the definition of love, said fisher, “is the fact that he grew this rhubarb for me.”

    

bbbc goods are found locally six months out of every year.

    

visit this inspiringly palate-savvy pie and cookie-swept scene online by searching for bbbc on facebook and at www.blackbuggybakingcompany.com.