KALONA

On Saturday, Olivia Kahler proved that she doesn’t have to raid the liquor cabinet to persuade the Kalona Days baking contest judges. Her Lemon Blueberry Crumble was zero-proof and still came out on top.

“This is the first year I have done one without booze,” she said, pausing to talk with The News after accepting her Grand Champion apron, a custom creation from the team at Stitch N Sew Cottage.

Kahler has a track record – and faces high expectations – when it comes to her pies. In 2022 she took home her first Grand Champion apron for her Maple Bourbon Pecan pie, one that mayor and pie judge Mark Robe enjoyed so much, he requested one for his birthday.

She followed that up with a Summer Sangria in 2023 that was intoxicating although not victorious, and a Strawberry Rhubarb Rosé in 2024 that earned her second runner up.

If Kahler has a secret method to creating award-winning pies, it’s essentially to wing it.

“Recipes fail me,” she said. “If I make it up as I go, I have a better shot. And that’s what happened. I threw two entire lemon pies away this week before I got to yesterday, and I was like, you know what? I’m out. I’m gonna make one and enter it and we’re gonna see. And that’s what happened with the pecan too.”

Not having a recipe meant Kahler paused over the “Origin of Recipe” line on the entry form and then laughed.

“I wrote ‘Two for one blueberry sale’, which is true,” she said. “I had four boxes of blueberries in my fridge,” and they provided the perfect impromptu complement to the lemon filling she was trying to finesse.

But every piemaker and judge knows that crust is critical, and if Kahler has a real secret, it may lie with her crust. Her recipe’s origins are decades old; it comes from her grandmother Wilma Gingerich’s great aunt, Dorothy Martin, and she uses it for every pie she makes.

“The crust is what really holds my pies together,” she jokes.