April 2025 🌷
i'm just going to play with house money.
April is the funniest of times, a constant fight of warm and cold. One day the park is full of daffodils the next its flooded in puddles collected from rain that feels like it will never stop. April showers bring May flowers but year after year we forget this when we are soaking wet confused about what to wear. The thing is there is always a slight chance of an April snowstorm.
This is a time of year that most people crave the most. Once we lose an hour in the later half of the year, the days get shorter, the nights get longer all of us think about the time we are in now fondly. All we want are the longer days, the later sunsets, the flowers a bloom the promise that you’ll get to wear that transitional jacket you bought. Since you know your window to wear it is about 16 days.
For those 16 days you feel invincible like you can do anything, be anyone, drink everything, dance all night, the days are warm but breezy, the air is light an not thick and heavy with summers humidity yet. While writing this I am getting that excited feeling in my chest about the first day of spring i’ll spend all day with my friends drinking, laughing, bopping around, full of possibility.
For the past decade, April always made me think about a person I loved’s birthday. I would spend all of March into mid April planning the best gift possible. From custom portraits to vintage first pressings of vinyl records with songs that meant something to us. That person isn’t in my life anymore so the place is clear for something new, something for me. This April, I will spend what I like to call house money on myself.
If my house was a casino, I’m betting all on the house.
This April i’ll be baking pies for myself, being creative for myself not for a brand deal or an assignment or a piece I need to complete (those of course I will still do, hello, I’m a virgo if I tell you i’m going to complete something, I’ll finish it) but more just doing stuff for the fun of it. Doing that lead to the birth of Cynthia 🐑.
CYNTHIA
My lamb shaped pie - filled with minty mushy peas, with fur of mashed potatoes, olives for ears and nose and a crown of micro greens!
I had a Sunday, purposely set aside with no obligations but hang out in the kitchen for a prolonged period of time. Every year around Easter I would see these lovely lamb cakes I discovered thanks to my baking life friend Bronwen of Bayou Saint Cake. I decided this year why not, could I make a lamb pie? could I make it savory? could I make it filled with things that lambs eat? do lambs eat peas? I hope so.
I feel in our modern lives we rarely have time set aside for “play” and thats exactly what I did with this lamb pie assignment I gave myself. I just let it roll and I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out!
Here is Bronwen’s post that will give you further lamb cake context! Including a step by step of how to make a lamb cake of your own!
I turned on some tunes, vibed out and just riffed in the kitchen making the lamb pie out of one large domed free form pie and two small pies made in the muffin tin. held together all with mashed potatoes (made sturdier with a little cream cheese, allowing me to use it like shellac and pipe the fur).
Here is a rough recipe if you would like to bake a Cynthia of your own or follow Bronwen’s instructions if you could like to make a cake version!
HAPPY SPRING!
Recipe is for paid subscribers!
Prep Time: 3 hours
Cook Time: 1 hour 30 mins
Total Time: 4 hours 30 minutes
Yield: 1 large free form pie, 2 pie muffins resulting in 1 lamb pie
Crust: 2 and 1/2 all butter pie crusts, rolled out about 1/8 inch thick.
Recipe available in 50 pies, 50 states
Filling
4 tablespoons butter, unsalted
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds frozen peas
1/2 cup shallots, minced
2 tablespoons garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
1 teaspoon smoked red chili flakes
1 cup vegetable broth
salt & pepper to taste
Mashed Potatoes
5 pounds potatoes (I use half Yukon Gold, half Russet potatoes)
2 large cloves garlic, minced
6 tablespoons butter
1 cup whole milk
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
2 sprigs of fresh sage
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
Decorations
2 black olives for eyes and nose
Microgreens for garland
Special Equipment
3”inch round cookie cutter
pizza cutter
potato masher
piping bag and piping tip of choice
muffin pan
Instructions
Make the Filling
In a large pot over medium heat, heat up butter and olive oil. Once butter has melted sauté shallots till translucent, 3-5 minutes. Add in the peas and cook till warmed through. Add in garlic, mint and chili flakes and sauté till fragrant. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally so peas soften. Once tender, take about half the mixture and blend in a food processor/blend till pureed. Returned pureed peas to pot with whole peas and fold to combine. Set aside to cool.
Prep the Crust
On a parchment lined sheet pan, place rolled out pie crust and cut out a rough oval 10” in length. Repeat with second full pie crust. Leaving about an inch around the edge mound up your cooled mushy pea filling (save about 1 cup of filling, set aside). Pile it high this will be your lamb’s main body! Cover with the second pie dough and push down around the mount to seal the edge. Crimp tightly around the filling. Place in freezer to form.
Take the half rolled out pie crust and cut 4 circles about 3 inches wide with circular cookie cutter, place two bottoms into a muffin tin. Fill with remaining pea pie filling you set aside and top to remaining crust rounds. You should end up with 2 pie muffins. Place in freezer to form.
Bake the Pies
Pre heat oven to 375 degrees.
Take pies (oval free form pie, for lamb body and muffin tin with 2 pie muffins) from the freezer and brush with egg wash. Bake for 1 hour until lightly golden brown. Rotating the pastries at 30 minutes. Pull the pie muffins at the 30 minute mark.
Let the pastries cool on the baking sheet for at least an hour.
Make the Mash Potatoes
Peel and cut the potatoes into evenly-sized chunks, about an inch or so thick, and transfer them to a large stockpot full of cold water. Be sure that there is enough cold water in the pan so that the water line sits about 1 inch above the potatoes. Then turn the heat to high and cook until the water comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-high and continue cooking for about 10-12 minutes, or until fork tender. Carefully drain out all of the water.
While the potatoes are cooking. In a small sauce pan, heat the butter, milk, garlic, fresh herbs and a pinch of salt. Bring to a simmer and simmer for 3-5 minutes so the butter melts and the herbs and garlic infuse the liquid mixture. Set aside until ready to use.
Once potatoes are cooked through, drain them and return the potatoes to the hot stockpot, place it back on the hot burner, and turn the heat down to low. Using two oven mitts, carefully hold the handles on the stockpot and shake it gently on the burner for about 1 minute to help cook off some of the remaining steam within the potatoes. Remove the stockpot entirely from the heat and set it on a flat, heatproof surface.
Using your preferred kind of potato masher, mash the potatoes to your desired consistency. Then pour half of the melted butter mixture over the potatoes, and fold it in with a wooden spoon or spatula until potatoes have soaked up the liquid. Repeat with the remaining butter, and then again with the cream cheese, folding in each addition in until just combined to avoid over-mixing. (Feel free to add in more warm milk to reach your desired consistency, if needed.) One final time, taste the potatoes and season with extra salt if needed.
Assemble the Lamb!!!
Fill a piping bag with the piping tip of your choice with the mashed potato. Get a chopping board or serving plate of your choice and dab a little mash potato on it, maybe 2 tablespoons worth, place the large oval of pie on top. The mash potato will add as a little glue so the pie doesn’t move around.
On the body of the lamb pipe a little mashed potato where you would like the lambs neck to go. Then take one of the pie muffins flip it upside down and attach. Cover with pipped mashed potato. Take the second pie muffin and turn it on its side with bottom facing forward (this will be the lambs face). Cover in mashed potato. It will all look very bing bong at this point but trust the process. Begin to pipe the mashed potato all over the structure in swirls to mimic lambs fur, refill the piping bag when needed.
Once the lamb is fully covered, pipe a tail and some ears. Then using a butter knife or off set spatula smooth out the face of the lamb to your desired shape. Take your cut olives and make eyes and a nose. Use the micro greens to adorn your lamb with a crown or a sash!
THERE YOU HAVE IT! You’re own pie lamb is born!!
Thank you again to Bronwen for the inspiration!
What I am…
WATCHING: Hacks on MAX - MY GIRLS ARE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
LISTENING: SABLE, fABLE - Bon Iver
To say I am a fan of Justin Vernon and Bon Iver would be the understatement of the century. He has been my celebrity crush since 2008. The real ones know about the Bon Iver erotic fan fiction tumblr (you’re welcome). This new album is an absolute triumph. I have listened to the first part SABLE on repeat when it came out in October and I cannot stop listening to the entirety of it now.
Notable fave songs: “Walk Home”, “From” “I’ll Be There” - Also the intro “Short Story” cracked my chest open.
Fave lyric so far “Keep the sad shit off the phone, get your fine ass on the road”
If anyone knows Justin, do your girl a favorite I would really love to buy that man a sandwich and ask him about the Indigo Girls song “Fugitive”
Till we meet in May
xoxo
Stacey
Cynthia is perfect.
CYNTHIA!!!