Promising new pie shop rolls out flaky-crust pastries in Garland

The desire for great pie never wanes, so hopes are high for Piefalootin Pie Shop, a new shop opening in Garland in late spring 2019.

Piefalootin comes from Tracy Dowd, a lifelong baker who learned how to make pies from the very best place of all: her grandmother.

She's been running her own pie business for a few years, supplying her pies to places like Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House. Now she's ready for her next step: opening her own shop at 2441 Goldfinch Ln., in a little center on Shiloh Road. She hopes to open sometime in April.

Dowd lives in the area and is passionate about the idea of bringing pie to this part of town in Garland on the border of East Dallas. "Garland has never had a dedicated pie shop," she says.

She does classics like coconut cream pie, Key lime, and Texas pecan, but she also loves to roll out original creations not found at any other pie shop in the world.

"Espresso My Love" has a German chocolate espresso cream filling on a bed of chopped pecans and chocolate chips, topped with chocolate whipped cream, coconut, chocolate shavings, and a chocolate drizzle.

"I really like putting new things together and coming out with something that's a little different," Dowd says.

She also employs unexpected techniques like sprinkling crumbled cookies over the crust below the filling, to inject extra dimension to the flavor.

Her first walk on the wild side was a cherry pie with jalapeno. "People have said to me that they find some pies too sweet, and when you add something like jalapeno, it balances that sweetness," she says.

One of her signatures is a UK classic called a banoffee pie, traditionally made, as the name implies, with bananas and toffee.

"My banoffee pie is different from the original recipe," she says. "I add banana nut bread crumbles on the bottom, then my dulce de leche and banana and espresso whipped cream." Photos on the shop's Facebook page depict a divine pie with thick slices of banana in an alluring layer of caramel with a bouffant of coffee-tinted cream.

She also does an interesting twist on cheesecake pie with two layers. "I have blueberry, strawberry, and blackberry," she says. "Those have a graham cracker crumble sprinkled on the crust, then a layer of fruit filling, and then a cheesecake-like topping on top."

Dowd had a regular job, but quit six years ago when she decided to dedicate herself to baking pies. She started out baking from home, taking orders, which she still does.

Three years ago, she started delivering pies to Goodfriend, then Cultivar Coffee, and the idea of having a real pie shop where people could buy whole pies or sit down and have a slice of pie, maybe with a cup of coffee, began to form.

For Dowd, the crust is the most important element to a pie, and about that fact, she is 100 percent correct.

"I don't do graham cracker crusts, I do a real crust from my grandmother's recipe," she says. "It's not anything elaborate, it's just a good pie crust, not crumbly, I use shortening so it's flaky. It's your grandma's pie crust."