Pi Day falls on March 14 every year and celebrates the mathematical constant pi. A Fort Wayne candy shop and bakery celebrated the day last weekend with unique pies and a pie-themed art auction, and raised money to benefit the American Cancer Society and small business owners in need.
In this week’s NorthEATS Indiana, WBOI takes you on a behind-the-scenes look at the event and some of Sweets So Geek’s edible creations.
The Hoosier Heart Attack is more than just a pie.
“This is our spice cake, which we will be putting a full sugar cream pie inside of this, and we call that the Hoosier Heart Attack,” Seewald said.
That was Chad Seewald, the owner of Sweets So Geek. He says the first step to making a Hoosier Heart Attack is to bake a layer of spice cake.
“We’ll put this in the oven for a few moments so that it starts to set up, otherwise the pie will just sink straight to the bottom, which becomes the top, and that doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
The next step was the hard part. Seewald flips a pre-cooked sugar cream pie into the pan.
Once the pie is in the cake pan, he filled the rest of it with more spice cake and let it bake for one hour.
“We just put a cold pie inside of the cake, so thermodynamically, being geeky there, you have a completely cold core that’s got to heat through before the baking process will complete everything,” Seewald said.
When it’s done, the sugar cream pie will only be heated to room temperature.
Other unique creations at Sweets So Geek’s Pi Day event include bacon bourbon pie. Seewald cooks bacon fat into the crust instead of butter and tops it with bacon.
There were also fried pies in a variety of flavors, like the Elvis, with peanut butter marshmallow fluff and bacon cooked into it.
But the event wasn’t just about the pie. It was also a benefit for the American Cancer Society and a fund for small business owners in Fort Wayne. The proceeds of last year’s Pi Day event went to Lindsey Hively, the former owner of Poptique Popcorn who was battling cancer. She died the next month, and the Live Bold fund was then created in her honor to help small business owners when “life gets in the way,” says Seewald, who created the fund.
“If you get sick and you can’t come and run your business, house fire, car accident, those sort of things, you may have insurance, you may have things that step up, but it takes time for that to happen, and most of the time you need help right away and that’s what we’re there to provide,” he said.
Many of the people who attended the Pi Day event on Saturday knew Hively, including her high school friend Holly Fairchild. She donated $25 to pie their friend Emily Putt in the face.
“Everything we do, they’ll say Lindsey (would) want you to do that, and she knows it’s a way to tug at my heartstrings, so she got me to do it.” Putt said.
Fairchild says Hively would have loved the event and the Live Bold fund set up in her memory.
“I’m so appreciative. She would be beyond appreciative," Fairchild said. "She would be one of the first to give the shirt off her back for somebody that might be in her similar situation as well; I just think it's so neat to see how everybody comes together.”
People who attended the Pi Day festivities at Sweets So Geek ate pies, bought artwork made from pie pans, and threw pies in faces. Seewald says the benefit raised more than $1,500. It will be split evenly between the American Cancer Society and the Live Bold fund.
If you missed the Pi Day events but still want to try one of the desserts, the menu will be available for the next few weeks.
