In the late summer, a baker’s fancy turns to thoughts of pie. Everywhere you look in the markets, you’re confronted with gorgeous fruit in season.

Naturally, this is the time of year to hold pie contests. The 5th Annual Mission Pie Contest pulled in 20 hopefuls on Sunday, and the people who showed up were as varied as the pies they brought to the competition.

Mission Pie co-owner Krystin Rubin preps the contenders. Can you tell which one will win Best in Show? Hint: it’s staring you right in the face!

After the judges got an eyeful of the complete pie (appearance was a key judging factor), Mission Pie co-owner Krystin Rubin cut them open. You’d think, as a professional, she’d cast a jaundiced eye over some of the sloppier entrants, but no. “Each one is just a delight to encounter. The amount of care that’s gone into each one of these... Really, it’s touching to me, how seriously all the contestants are taking this.”

While the judges tasted and took notes in the kitchen, the contenders and their supporters dove into the rest of the pies laid out in the front room.

Checking out the competition while the judges deliberate back in the kitchen.

Callie Arnold, a pre-school teacher currently from West Marin, made a chocolate cherry pie. She acknowledged preemptively that the recipe makes for a pie that’s “a little soupy,” but that’s exactly why she thinks it works. Arnold loves how the cherry juices run out and mix with the chocolate. Years of practice have made her confident of this pie’s charms, but she harbored doubts when I talked to her, right after she tasted the Shaker Lemon.

The Shaker Lemon.

Clothing designer Michelle Tannenbaum of San Francisco was also worried about the Shaker Lemon. She made a galette with plums, pluots, and Mission, Adriatic and Kadota figs. The filling came courtesy of Knoll Farms, the famous fig producer from Brentwood. OK, so I’m biased, because I did a story on them two years ago for NPR and I was blown away by their fruit. Tannenbaum was more than blown away. After years of arriving at the open of the Ferry Building Farmers' Market to get first crack at their fruit, she finally began selling for the Knolls at their stand. The habit is cheaper that way.

With 20 pies on the table, Judge Patricia Hewitt has got to take careful notes.

Back in the kitchen, the judging continued. Filmmaker Kyle Garrett recently started The 7 Squared Project, a documentary series highlighting non-profit and otherwise “purposeful” businesses in San Francisco. Mission Pie, with its mission driven approach to community building, is one of his subjects. Of course, I had to ask him about the Shaker Lemon. Garrett thought it “pretty spectacular,” even though he’s not a huge lemon fan. “It was kind of crisp and chewy at the same time. The flavor was not overpowering.“

Judge Kyle Garrett clears his palette with a sip of water.

While there were professional bakers on the judging panel, (Michelle Pusateri of Nana Joe's Granola and Mission Pie’s Sharon Litzky) Mission Pie’s co-owners Krystin Rubin and Karen Heisler like to make sure non-professionals are well represented, too. Each year, the previous year’s winner is invited to judge. Patricia Hewitt won the contest last year with a honey pie, made with honey from her own bee hive. “A honey mousse pie, really. With a very flaky crust.”

The Emperor Norton

Hewitt was immediately taken with the concept of the Emperor Norton, a chocolate nut concoction. “It’s incredibly sweet and nutty, and Emperor Norton probably was sweet and nutty, too. I’m really thrilled to see someone incorporating the history of San Francisco into a San Franciscan pie contest.”

There must be some way to find the metaphoric significance in the toughness of the crust as it relates to the character of the famous 19th century oddball, but I can’t think of it off-hand. Somebody had to hold the plate down, so Hewitt could make off with a bite of the Emperor Norton using her compostable fork. Still, she was smitten.

After 90 minutes, with the crowd in the front room buzzed with restless energy. They’d already fixed on their pick for People’s Choice. But the judges in the kitchen took their time, deliberating earnestly.

Everybody loved the flaky crust on the Shaker lemon, but only on top. The bottom was gummy, and in a pie contest, anything less than a dynamite crust will take you out of the running. The judges waxed lyrical about the crust on a lime blackberry Italian meringue that “revealed itself in layers.” Best Crust by a unanimous vote.

Emperor Norton walked away with Most Creative. But the crown for Best in Show went to something entirely different, an unassuming pie with none of the visual flash or dazzle of its competitors. It was, one judge said later, “a sleeper.”

When the group got to the Coffee Break Pie, they all murmured the word “love” in unison. Even though one judge worried the taste was so “classic,” there was a good chance this pie came straight from an old recipe book. As if that would be a problem. Executing a pie recipe properly is no small feat.

The judge needn’t have worried. Coffee Break Pie did not exist before Sunday.

Sarah Jones takes the crown to thunderous applause.

For the past two weeks, Sarah Jones of Dallas (and more recently Palo Alto) has been baking “non-stop.” She baked every night, and ate pie for breakfast, searching for the perfect recipe. Her colleagues in accounting at Apple have also been gamely gaining weight in support of her bid.

Jones found something close in Bon Appetit: a recipe for caramel coffee creme brulee. And then she found another, for a salty honey pie.

“So I basically took a salty honey recipe, substituted caramel that was infused with coffee for the honey and then did a Biscoff cream (creamed cookies, people!) and sea salt." She had been looking for Nutella in the market and came across the Biscoff instead...

“At the last minute, I decided to lighten it up with the Biscoff cream, and I think that helped cut the sweetness a little bit.”

“I was so afraid,” Jones said, “because everybody had fruit, and I was going to go fruit. And I just decided, you know, I’m going to go really rich.”

She must have been gauging the tenor of the room, because the People’s Choice was indeed fruity to the max: Ru Cymrot-Wu’s Olallieberry and Peach.

Ru Cymrot-Wu wins the People’s Choice award

Two awards for summer fruit. Two for rich and creamy. In all honesty, they were all of them poetry on a plate. In this kind of a contest, everybody wins.

For the second year in a row, Scharffen Berger and TuttiFoodie are hosting the Chocolate Adventure Contest. You have a little over two weeks to put the finishing touches on your best chocolate recipe in one of three categories--beverage, sweet or savory that includes at least one "adventure" ingredient and Scharffen Berger® Chocolate: dark chocolate (mentioning exact cacao content anywhere from 62 to 99 percent), milk chocolate or cocoa.

This year's adventure ingredients are: popping candy (unflavored or flavored), wattleseed, palm sugar, basil, mustard seeds, coriander, black sesame seeds, black or pink peppercorns, chili pepper (fresh or whole dried), coconut milk, kaffir lime leaf, matcha tea, mango, plantain, jicama, tapioca pearls (any size), tamarind (or tamarind paste), cacao nibs. Grand prize winners in each of the top three categories will win $5,000. There are also runner's up prizes. Read all the rules and details before donning your apron.

I checked in with a couple of this year's judges to get their best tips. First local chocolate guru and cookbook author, Alice Medrich:

What are your favorite trends in chocolate recipes?
I like unexpected ingredient pairings that work so well that when you taste them you say "of course!" and "why didn't I think of that." Some of these are as subtle and simple as chocolate paired with extra virgin olive oil, salt and spices, or a hint of aged Parmesan in a chocolate nut wafer.

Where do you see the most potential for innovation in recipe development?
I love that place where sweet and savory meet. I want to see (and create) more recipes that are imaginative without being forced or gimmicky: Deliciously New, but not so weird that you don't want to taste them again and again. This involves being open to flavors affinities between ingredients that we don't normally put together! The adventure contest-with its global and pop (literally!) culture ingredients and flavors is fertile ground for the wildly creative AND the intellectual cook. New flavor paradigms will emerge, and from them, new classic dishes. Because the contest involves home cooks, as well as professionals, we'll see an acceleration of new ideas and new trends. It's exciting.

And from the founder of the Tutti Foodie newsletter, Lisa Schiffman:

What are your favorite trends in chocolate recipes?
I've got a few favorites. First: recipes that take a chance on something new, whether it's a surprising ingredient or a new technique. Second: savory chocolate recipes. Historically, we've seen chocolate recipes that are laden with sugar-so much so, that the sugar often overwhelms the recipe. Creating something savory with chocolate seems to open new flavor vistas.

Where do you see the most potential for innovation in recipe development?
In simple recipes with adventurous twists.

Good luck!

Here is one of the top recipes from last year's contest to get you thinking outside the box:

Wasabi Pears In Deep Chocolate Pools
Creator: Susan Scarborough, Florida
Category: Dessert
Servings: 4
Adventure Ingredient: Wasabi

Ingredients:
4 small pears, such as a good sized Seckel
4 cups Riesling wine
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons wasabi paste
8 ounces Scharffen Berger® 70% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate
4 mint leaves or stems of lemon grass

Preparation:
Peel pears closely, leaving the stems. Core from the bottom, leaving the pear whole, and slice bottom flat to make a stable base.

Place the wine, sugar, water, lemon juice, and half of the wasabi in a 2½-quart saucepan over medium heat.
Stir until sugar is dissolved and add the pears. Simmer until pears are just tender. Remove from heat and add the remaining wasabi.

Cool, remove from liquid, place pears on a plate and then cover. Chill in refrigerator.

When ready to serve, place chocolate in top of double boiler and melt over simmering water. Pour pools of chocolate on individual dessert plates, top with a pear. Insert stem of mint leaf near stem of pear, cross lemongrass stem on rim of plate for garnish if desired.

Presentation:
If you have rectangular serving plates, use them and place the pear with mint leaves on one, with the stems of lemongrass crossed on the other.

If you'd like to melt the chocolate in this recipe without using a double boiler, try this method: just before you're ready to serve the pears, heat a 1/3 cup of half and half in a small saucepan over low heat. Then add the chocolate, stirring until the chocolate is fully melted. You can then pour this mixture in pools on the individual dessert plates and top with a pear.
-- Chocolate Adventure Contest staff

Perhaps the world can be divided in two: those who love tofu and those who hate it. Frankly I don't understand how anyone can hate something so benign. Tofu, a form of soybean curd, is mild and creamy and a tremendously versatile ingredient. I've made chocolate mousse with tofu, dips with tofu, entrees with tofu and even a delicious salad that had an Asian style vinaigrette and slivers of celery.

Regardless of how you feel about it, the tofu haiku contest is open to you. And admit it, just saying "tofu haiku" is appealing, kind of like a greeting in a foreign language.

Tofu, which is pronounced slightly differently in Chinese and Japanese can be soft like custard, firm and dry or almost liquid-like in texture. It absorbs flavors easily so it can be used in many ways. Marinating it will infuse it with flavor as will cooking it in a sauce. It is rich in protein, making it a favorite of some vegetarians, it is also a good source of Vitamin B and iron.

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry arranged in three lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables and then 5 syllables. It is supposed to evoke a sense of season, be written in present-tense and juxtapose two images, marked by a turning point.

Here's one I wrote:

white as winter snow
creamy tofu sits silent
then disappears like springtime

More examples are available with the contest rules. Bottom line? The judges are looking for great poems about you-know-what.

Sponsored by the Toronto Vegetarian Society, the contest offers a myriad of tofu and non-tofu prizes.

Over at Cooking with Amy is my recipe for Tofu and Celery Salad