So many pies, so little time: apple, peach, chocolate, cheesecake, blackberry, banana, pumpkin—even quiche and pot pie, and the list goes on—all fresh and homemade, were available at last Saturday’s Malibu Pie Festival. The event has been organized by the Malibu United Methodist Church for the past 29 years as their way of promoting unity in the community. Admission is free, but the pie is not. The well-attended event is held on the church’s shaded outdoor patio with live music all day, gift baskets for sale, lunch options and plenty of tables and chairs.
Although the pie festival is technically a fundraiser for various causes the church supports, its main purpose is bringing the Malibu community together, Reverend Sandy Liddell explained to The Malibu Times. Every year, there’s a theme for the festival, and this year, it was “Creating a Compassionate Community” when it comes to helping the homeless and others.
The ins and outs of the Pie Festival were spelled out by Diane Malecha, who’s been volunteering at the annual event for the past 15 years. She said church members and their friends start the process of baking pies for sale nearly two weeks before the festival. The bakers then bring what looked like hundreds of pies of all varieties in on the morning of the festival, and sell them to the public at $5 per slice or $25 for an entire pie, available for eat-in or take-home.
A whole different category of pies is brought in for the official “Pie Baking Contest,” which is held indoors. For these special pies, which look like works of art, the bakers pay an entry fee and judges award prizes. The judges don’t get to take their own pie samples for judging—volunteers like Kay Gabbard cut off small slivers of the pies and feed them to the judges. The pies are divided and judged by category: fruit, cheesecake, apple, seasonal, meringue/cream, chocolate or savory; with a first, second and third place prize awarded for each. The pies are then cut up and sold off after the judging.
Malecha said there are usually about 120 pies submitted for judging, one-quarter of which come from “kids” who do not compete with adults—they compete in age-based categories: age eight and under, ages nine to 13 and ages 14-18.
“Most contestants are very serious about entering their pies, and do it every year,” Malecha observed. “Some keep persevering until they win.” She explained that for the Pie Baking Contest, not all of the entries come from Malibu—some come from surrounding cities like Santa Monica and Agora Hills.
Al Coleman, a parishioner who helps organize the annual event, is also a pie baker. He said that he, his sister and a friend baked and donated 30 pies and two cheesecakes, including blueberry, raspberry, peach, pear, chocolate and peanut butter fudge.
“The crusts are a team effort,” he said. “You can make the crust ahead of time and freeze it, and sometimes we’ll also roll the crust out and make it into pie shells ahead of time.”
Coleman was one of the volunteers manning the hamburger and hotdog booth for attendees who wanted lunch before pie.
“On our secret menu, we also have grilled cheese, which went over well this year,” he said.
Eight children entered the “Pie Eating Contest,” with the top two prizes won by sisters Riley and Charlotte Hill in a virtual tie. The two each managed to down most of a chocolate pie in about 30 seconds, which they were still wearing on their faces when interviewed. Their mother said they do not practice at home.
Longtime parishioner and volunteer Cricket Wheeler said the idea for the Malibu Pie Festival all started 29 years ago when former pastor Larry Peacock “noticed a lot of strife in Malibu between developers and environmentalists. He said we should come together as a community over something sweet—like pie”—with the belief that people can’t stay mad at each other while having a piece of pie. He came up with the idea for the festival, which was held in the Malibu Village parking lot for a number of years before moving to church grounds.
