Love is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and squalls of flour:
love is a clash of lightning bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

—Neruda, Love Sonnet XII

Happy Pie Day, folks.

The pie I’m sharing today was inspired by Gustav Klimt’s Der Kuss.
This past fall, my best friend Thais and I took ourselves out on a dreamy Viennese date, starting with lunch at Café Sabarsky, which has divine Austrian food, and then heading upstairs to the Neue Galerie, where we viewed Klimt’s second most famous painting: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I . It was magnificent.
The scale of Klimt’s work is large, and allows the viewer to get lost in each and every corner and its dizzying detail. The textures and layers he achieved are remarkable. The Portrait was nearly entirely gold and heavily saturated, yet Adele’s dress floats above, lifting her out of the vermeil and into a second dimension.

I wanted the pie filling to represent the shawl that cocoons Klimt’s Lovers with a similar effect to Adele’s dress: carving out their own shimmering umwelt and shielding their kiss.

I decided it would be a Klimt Klemon pie, smooth and silky and a perfect backdrop to fancifulness.
The curd is pleasurably puckering, mostly tart with a bracing hit of sweetness, but not cloying, sticky, or stodgy, thanks to a measured hand with the cornstarch.
The crust is all-butter, as ever. I used rice vinegar this time to see how the tenderizing effects would differ from my usual ACV or white vinegar: I didn’t find much of a difference when baked, but the raw dough is certainly milder.

Here’s the sacrilegious part: to make a pie crust into a canvas, you need to really be able to count on it not spreading, bubbling, distorting, or otherwise ruining your hard work. There can be no takesies-backsies once it’s in the oven.
So, to that end, you must take your crust to a just-overmixed point. You get to the stage where the lovely golden, fat chunks of butter are still gleaming in the sandy, floury soil, and then you keep pulsing or cutting with your pastry cutter.
You don’t have to entirely butcher it: it really amounts to three or four additional pulses/cuts. You will lose a few layers by doing this, but I promise you that your painting will stay beautiful when baked.
The crust is not at all stodgy or short when using this technique; it still has a respectable amount of flaky layers (see above) and the buttery flavor is a perfect foil to the lemon.
After it’s rolled and chilled, it’s a perfect medium to paint. I use food coloring + rum (I prefer vodka but had none).
Gold leaf is applied AFTER baking. Use a tiny amount of rum to moisten the area you will be placing the gold leaf.

This pie is great with or without the over the top Art Nouveau decorations, but if you choose to go the Klimt route, make sure you have some very fine brushes and a lot of patience.

Pi day, previously:
2021: lime and coconut pie
2020: toasted black sesame pie
2019: black bottom cherry pie
2018: brown butter smoked salted honey pie
2017: vegan campfire pie
2016: brûléed citrus and lime pie

Pie, previously:
2018: plum and frangipane pie
2017: perfect peach pie
2016: pumpkin meringue tart
2015: apple, pear, butterscotch, and cheddar pie
2015: fig, rosemary, and lemon tart
2014: coconut buttermilk chess pie
2014: peach slab pie
2014: American pie
2013: Pumpkin spice brown butter chocolate pecan pie

Klimt Klemon Pie
makes 1 9-inch pie
filling lightly adapted from Erin Jeanne McDowell

ingredients:
for the crust:
375 grams (3 cups plus 2 tablespoons) AP flour
15 grams (1 tablespoon) sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
226 grams (16 tablespoons, 1 cup) butter, cold, in cubes
1/2 cup water mixed with 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (or sub any vinegar) and ice cubes

for the filling:
420 grams (1 3/4 cups) fresh lemon juice
120 grams (1/2 cup) water
360 grams (1 3/4 cups) granulated sugar
45 grams (1/3 cup) cornstarch
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 eggs
6 egg yolks
113 grams (8 tablespoons) butter, cubed

directions:
Make the crust: whisk flour, salt, and sugar together.
Cut and mix the butter into the flour mixture until the largest piece is pea-sized.
Then pulse or cut the mixture a few more times, until the butter has become crumb-like but not sticky.
Sprinkle on the ice vinegar water 1 tablespoon at a time so that you can gather the dough into a cohesive mass.
Divide dough into two unequal disks: one that is ~2/3 of the dough and one that is 1/3 and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Roll out the large disk into a 10 1/2 inch round and drape over the pie plate, crimping the edges, then dock with a fork and refrigerate.
Roll the other disk out and cut out shapes as desired; store in fridge before painting/decorating as desired.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Place parchment in the prepared crust and weight with pie weights (I use dried beans).
Place on a baking sheet and bake until puffed and very lightly golden, about 30 minutes.
Allow to cool while you make the filling: whisk lemon juice and water together in a medium pot.
Whisk sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a large bowl, then whisk into the lemon juice mixture and place over medium heat.
Stir, constantly, until the mixture come to a simmer.
Simmer for 2 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and yolks together vigorously until homogeneous in the large bowl.
Using a ladle, carefully transfer 1/4 cup hot lemon mixture into the eggs while whisking quickly.
Repeat with two more ladle-fuls.
Whisk the egg mixture back into the pot with the remaining lemon mixture, and cook, stirring constantly, for 5-7 minutes, or until the curd is thickened with “fat bubbles from the center of the pot.”
Place the butter into the large bowl and carefully pour the hot curd over it.
Whisk vigorously until emulsified and silky.
Pour into pie crust.
Refrigerate overnight.
Meanwhile, you can use your prepared shapes from the saved portion of dough to create art to top the pie: you could cut out shapes, or do what I did and use food coloring and brushes to paint a scene.
Use rum or vodka to mix your paints to the color you desire (make sure you have extra alcohol on hand, because it evaporates quickly while you work).
If the dough becomes gummy, pop it in the fridge for at least 15 minutes to firm back up.
These cut outs must be baked on a flat baking sheet with parchment at 325 for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of your cut outs.
If you are doing a painting, it’s best to check halfway through and use a pin or needle to pop any large pesky bubbles that may distort your painting; after popping, gently press down, then return the crust to the oven.

Cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
Three point one four one five nine,
Square root, cube root, BTU,
Sequence, series, limits too.
Themistocles, Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War,
X squared, Y squared, H2SO4.
Who for? What for? Who we gonna yell for?
Go, Maroons.
Logarithm, biorhythm, entropy, kinetics,
MPC, GNP, bioenergetics!
Maximize and integrate, titrate and equilibrate—
Go, Maroons.

—Very Unofficial UChicago football cheer, or whatever