The Winner of 'Australia's Best Pie 2016' is Vegan!
Australia’s annual ‘Best Pie’ competition, hosted by the Baking Association of Australia, brought in over 1,700 entries this year from across the country. According to Star Weekly, the pies are judged based on “color, how evenly baked, thickness of the pastry and how much the top had puffed up”, and this year’s selection for the best pie was special for two reasons.
First, the winning company, Ka Pies from Sunshine, Melbourne, was co-founded by a New Zealand native, Doug Meijer and the pies are baked ‘New Zealand style’. Second, the winning pie was completely vegan, making this the first time in the competition’s history that a vegan pie has won the ‘Best Pie’ title!
The 2016 winner was ‘Thai Vegetable Curry’, and according to the Daily Mail:
“The pie is made like a traditional Thai curry from fresh lemongrass and chillies, is topped with three triangle cuts and a sprinkle of parsley - the flavorful New Zealand inspired pastry.”
While the company itself is not vegan and submitted a number of different pies to the competition, in the end, the vegan one was named Australia’s best! On their website, Ka Pies states:
“Ka Pies are extremely proud to announce that we are the winners of the 2016 “Australia Best Pie” competition. It was awarded to us by the Bakers Association of Australia (BAA) and judged by some of the most prominent and well known bakers in the country. We competed against 1,700 pies from around Australia to earn the title. The winning flavor was “Thai Vegetable Curry” and is the first vegetarian winner in the history of the competition.”
While some may be shocked by the results of this competition, it will hopefully encourage the bakery to create more plant-based options, and for people to realize that meat and dairy-free pies are good enough to be considered Australia’s best!
Photo Credit: http://www.starweekly.com.au