Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Gravenstein Apple Fair Apple Pie Baking Contest! And thank you to everyone who entered. Our judges were impressed by the quality and creativity of all entries. If you didn’t win this year, we encourage you to enter next year! Read below for the list of winners and judges, winning recipe, plus a Q&A with mom-daughter duo Jody and Lauren McNaughton.
Winners – Adult
- 1st Place: Jody McNaughton
- 2nd Place: Lauren McNaughton
- 3rd Place: Stephanie Kuo
1st Place Winner – Youth
- Leela Ambrose
And yes, the 1st and 2nd Place Adult winners are related; Jody is Lauren’s mother! What a sweet story! Note that we had 20 entries, with only one youth entry but the judges evaluated it carefully and unanimously declared that it was of high quality and worthy of the top prize!
Thanks to our amazing judges for evaluating all the entries with great care and thoughtfulness!
- Adrianne Trinei, Local pie baker extraordinaire
- Alexis Trinei, Ramen Gaijin
- Alissa Trinei, North Coast Organic
- Betsy Fischer, Director, SRJC Culinary Arts Program
- Clark Wolf, James Beard Award-winning radio host & food champion
- Kyreen Jorgensen, Baker
- Sarah Owens, James Beard Award-winning cookbook author & owner, Ritual Foods
- Shelly Kaldunski, Chef/Instructor, SRJC Culinary Arts Program
We’re grateful to Sebastopol Hardware Center for providing the prizes: 1st Place prize – Le Creuset pie dish; 2nd Place prize – silicone baking sheets; 3rd Place prize – nesting measuring cups.
Here is the recipe for the 1st Place (Adult) pie!
Cranberry Gravenstein Apple Pie by Jody McNaughton
INGREDIENTS
Crust
Yields 2, 9-inch crusts
2.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour – spooned and leveled
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp kosher or coarse salt
1 cup cold, unsalted butter- cubed
6 tbsp ice cold water
Egg wash at bake (Beaten egg white)
(Optional) Sanding or coarse sugar for egg wash topping
Filling
4-6 Gravenstein apples, ripe
1 3/4 cup Cranberries (Frozen off season, fresh in season)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
1tsp fresh orange zest
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp corn starch
2 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees / Reduced to 350.
Prepare pie crust: Add all dry ingredients for pie crust into bowl; mix together. Cut in butter cubes with pastry cutter until small crumbs form. Slowly mix in water until dough is damp, but not wet. Pour dough mix onto floured surface or parchment. Form dough together until a dough ball is formed. Dough should not stick to hands or surface. Cut in half, wrap and chill for 30+ minutes. Roll out 1 dough ball on floured surface into thin layer, enough to cover 9″ pie dish and edges. Place dough into greased pie dish.
Prepare filling: Peel, core and slice (or dice) apples into small pieces. Add cranberry, orange zest to bowl. Place in bowl and sprinkle dry ingredients over top, mix to combine (optional; pre mix dry ingredients in separate bowl first). Add maple syrup and mix to combine. Place pie filling into pie dish with crust. Sprinkle cubed butter evenly over the top. Roll out second crust; and cover with entire crust, lattice, or decorative crust top of choice. Pinch top and bottom crust edges together. Ensure top crust has holes for ventilation Lightly brush with egg wash and coarse sugar.
Cover edges of pie crust with foil. Place in preheated oven, bake for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350, bake for an additional 20-30 minutes, until filling is bubbling and crust is golden brown. Cool before serving.
Q&A with Jody & Lauren McNaughton
Our publicist Monica Simpson recently chatted with Jody and Lauren about their pie baking strategies. We share their responses below.
Can you tell me if you two bake often together?
Yes, it’s a tradition around every holiday that we bake together, ever since Lauren was little. We love to throw down in the kitchen together!
Lauren, did you learn from Jody?
Absolutely yes. I was less interested as a child in the techniques of baking – moreso the end result haha. All that said – I learned everything from her. Mom built the recipes, and I got to learn the fundamentals of baking through her guidance. As an adult I got more curious and experimental on both baking and cooking alike- and love to bake as a hobby.
Are you competitive?
Lauren is for sure. Jody won’t admit it, but she’s got a competitive side in her for sure. We’re not really competitive with each other though, more-so supportive and encouraging. We’re also happy to see others win too – it’s all in the spirit of fun and good food!
Which pie does your family eat together?
The salted caramel apple with oat crumble is the family favorite hands down. It’s been fine tuned over the past couple of years, and is finally what we all consider a great pie. Ironically, Lauren doesn’t really care for cooked fruit, but still will taste everything along the way to ensure the recipe is good. We all REALLY love cheesecakes; another one of Lauren’s specialities.
What do you think made both of your recipes outstanding to take the 1st and 2nd prize?
Practice! We both had ideas that we thought had their own angle for a chance to win. As mentioned above, Lauren has been fine tuning the caramel apple recipe for a couple of years and made several practice pies for family and friends to give honest feedback on. That helped Lauren feel confident in her decision for recipe and consideration to win.
For Jody’s (mom’s) pie; she felt that there was likely going to be a lot of caramel apple or apple spice pies in the competition – so leaning into a more unique, tart, spiced pie may be a ticket to win. That one also took a few rounds of practice to get a nice balance of tart, sweet, and spiced from all the different ingredients. It was a bit of a riskier play; but clearly it paid off.
Any details you can share on the R&D side of things while you were testing the recipe?
Lauren has been making the caramel apple pie for a while now- and has had a little more time to dial it in to a good place. Jody’s pie was a totally new recipe, and that one took a few rounds to get a nice balance. With Gravensteins they’re a little less sweet than your average apple, so pairing them with another tart fruit meant she had to create a nice balance of flavors. It started with a sugar and spice mix only on round one, and Lauren ended up suggesting adding the maple syrup in a practice bake feedback. (Which, by the way, I think the recipe submitted said 2-3 TBSP of maple, she actually ended up increasing the maple on the final bake to about 7TBSP.)
Also- practice and feedback. The family knows we want them to be totally totally honest when we do practice bakes, and they are really helpful in dialing in a recipe to get it contest ready. We both had to plan for any changes to texture or taste with Gravenstein apples though, as their season is so short – we didn’t have a big window to bake with Gravensteins for practice. The ripeness of any apple impacts not only flavor, but texture and consistency – as the more ripe the apple; the less pectin they have. Pectin helps thicken the pie and create a great texture and stability.
We also both agree that a good crust is critical to a great pie. While the filling is the star of the show; the crust really delivers the texture and sensory experience.
Photos by Lisa Rose / The Farmers Photographer
