Can’t Bake? Buy Your Holiday Cakes and Pies from These Local Bakers

This holiday season you can treat your family and friends to some of the tastiest treats that our award winning local bakers can provide.

If you’re all thumbs in the kitchen, have no fear—local bakeries are here! Patch checked out three local bakers who are offering delicious pies, cakes and cookies for the holiday season. All the items these bakers offer are prepared in house and fresh. Jilly’s Café in High Ridge: You may not expect to find home baked pies at a steakhouse, but Jilly’s offers a wide range of tasty flavors. The pies are not on the regular menu, but they are baked with loving care from the restaurant’s own baker, Dana Gisi. Pies are $20 each and can be picked up as late as Dec. 24, but you must order by Dec. 20. If you have another date in mind, Jilly’s can bake a pie with a 48 hour turn around. Flavors: Carmel Apple, Makers Mark Pecan, Key Lime, Coconut Cream…

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Stuckmeyer's Gives Tips for Thanksgiving Pumpkin Prep

Fourth-generation family farm shares pumpkin pie recipes.

The owners of Stuckmeyer's Farm Market and Greenhouse, Fenton, a fourth-generation family-owned vegetable farm, share its recipes for pumpkin pie, including tips for how to turn a whole pumpkin into a cooking ingredient. There are two methods for preparing pumpkin: the oven method and the stove method. Stuckmeyer’s uses the oven method. First, wash the pumpkin and remove the seeds. Halve the pumpkin and bake it at 325 degrees with the cut side down on a cookie sheet until they pierce easily. When cool, quarter the pumpkin halves and peel off the outer skin. If the skin doesn’t peel off easily, it should bake a little longer. Mash or puree the pumpkin pulp. The stove method also works. Wash, peel and remove the seeds. Cut the pumpkin into …

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Diversions

Have a Slice of History in Kimmswick

This little river town is known as the place for eccentric shopping and giant slices of pie.

Kimmswick is a mere shadow of its former self, but what an interesting shadow. The town was founded 150 years ago and dozens of its oldest buildings have been restored into an eccentric shopping district. It’s also the home of the Blue Owl, a bakery and restaurant nationally famous for its towering pie. Kimmswick is about seven miles south of Arnold, off Hwy 61-67, in Jefferson County. It’s that same highway that almost killed this river town years ago. Kimmswick once thrived on traffic from steamboats that traveled up and down the Mississippi and from the Iron Mountain Railway, which both brought visitors from St. Louis. From 1880 to 1918 visitors poured into town to visit the “healing” mineral springs (now abandoned) and the Montesano …

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