My husband, Conrad, takes his sweets seriously. Especially pie. Key lime pie in particular.
He does this thing (my kids and I call it “The Interrogation”) where he asks the server three questions about any Key lime pie offered before deciding whether to order a slice:
1. What color is it?
2. What sort of crust does it have?
3. Is there anything on top?
Well-meaning waitstaff have no clue what constitutes a “right” answer, so when The Interrogation ends and Conrad politely says “Thanks. I’ll have the crisp,” without a word of explanation, you can understand the confused, defeated looks on their faces.
It’s excruciating.
“Can we not do this anymore?” I plead. “We’ve had such a nice meal. Let’s not spoil it.” Even if the server answers all the questions correctly—1. pale yellow, 2. flaky pastry, and 3. no meringue atop (whipped cream is the proper garnish)—he’s usually disappointed when he gets the pie.
“Probably not made with real Key limes,” he sadly concludes. I remind him that we live in Maine, where wild blueberry reigns supreme, and that it’s unreasonable for him to think he can find the pie of his Southern childhood in northern New England.
The thing about pie is that it’s not just a dessert. It’s comfort. It’s tradition. It’s indulgence bordering on self-care. It’s a host of tastes and smells that trigger all sorts of memories and connections. Pie is family, friends, holidays. Baking is chemistry, but pie is heart.
Conrad persisted. And one afternoon a few years ago we found a Key lime pie with heart.
We’d just finished brunch at the Osprey Restaurant in Georgetown when a waitress breezed past bearing a slice of what appeared to be Conrad-approved Key lime pie. The right color. The perfect crust. A dollop of whipped cream. His eyes widened.
“No,” I begged. “Not today.” But it was too late. Before I could request the check and hustle him out, he’d snagged a server and requested a piece. With two forks.
To say it was the best Key lime pie we’d had in Maine would not be accurate. It was the best we’d had anywhere. This pie struck the perfect balance of lime-tart and sugar-sweet, nestled in a crisp flaky layer of pastry and made truly decadent by a touch of pillowy cream. My Southern Boy was moved.
“Who made this pie?” he asked our waitress.
“We get them from a lady out on Westport Island,” she explained. “You want her name?”
And that’s when we first heard of Daphne Cromwell. A Winthrop native, she’s been living and baking professionally from her home kitchen on Westport Island for 30 years. Her creations range from wedding cakes to whoopie pies, from cupcakes to cookies. And of course, there are her pies.
“They’re phenomenal,” says John Drobin, a New Yorker who visits Maine each summer in his RV. He met Cromwell after sampling one of her pies years ago at Le Garage. Like Conrad, he asked to meet her, and she happened to be waiting tables there that evening. Since then, they connect annually, usually in the parking lot of the Wiscasset Shaw’s (easier to maneuver the RV), where she delivers the pie he’s ordered from her in advance.
“She has a real talent,” Drobin enthuses. “Yet she’s so humble.”
“People do leave flowers on my porch,” Cromwell admits. We met over lunch at the Water Street Kitchen & Bar, where, according to manager Shane McCarthy, they regularly sell out of her Key lime pie.
“They beep when they drive past my house,” she continues. “Once a woman just walked up to me and asked, ‘Are you The Pie Lady?’”
She seems both mystified and delighted by the ways customers find her, as well as where her pies end up. When Country Living magazine was styling homes in Boothbay for a recent issue, they requested her blueberry pie for a photo shoot. A Maine executive who regularly travels to London on a private jet enjoys Cromwell’s pies during in-flight meals (and sends her thank-you photos from the cabin). This past summer, Hollywood producer Hilary Weisman Graham, of Orange Is the New Black fame, direct-messaged Cromwell from Los Angeles to order dessert for her father’s birthday party in Maine.
It’s the sort of notoriety usually fueled by not only a great product but also great advertising. Yet this Pie Lady doesn’t advertise in the modern sense. She doesn’t have a website. Except for her personal Facebook page and an unassuming Instagram account (mostly featuring pretty pics of Westport, just-baked desserts, and cute grandkids), she spreads the word about her wares the old-fashioned way: from one happy customer to the next.
“I have a lot of people who ask for her contact info,” says Deb Wichert, the dining room manager at the Tugboat Restaurant in Boothbay. “We sell out of her pies every single week.”
Of course, there’s also the big wooden sign staked at the end of Cromwell’s driveway. Not every day, but most, she posts available pie offerings there. Then she’ll leave the pies next to the sign, in the open hatchback of her car. People pick up orders they’ve phoned in or simply pull over, choose a pie, and drop payment in a jar.
Westport Island neighbors Caroline and Jay Canning claim Cromwell’s creations are a drive-by delight as well as a waist-widening hazard. “The other day we picked up three!” Caroline enthuses. “They were all enjoyed in no time!”
“You can taste her sunny attitude,” Jay insists. “Her pies are made with love.”
Summertime neighbor Lelia McGregor, whose primary residence is Midway, Georgia, echoes that sentiment. “She’ll take a recipe and put her spin on it,” McGregor says. “She’ll put love in it. And you know, she makes the best pecan pie I’ve ever tasted. As a Southerner, I find that humbling.”
Cromwell learned to make pie by watching her grandmother. “I make her crust—which only has four ingredients—then just throw stuff in,” she says. “I just know how it should look.” Cromwell tries to keep the operation local, using only wild Maine blueberries, Maine pumpkin, fresh berries in season, and rhubarb from her mother’s garden.
The Key lime juice, she admits, is bottled, although the pie recipe itself (a secret!) is hers. Somehow, this native Mainer has managed to plumb the depths of true Key-limeness.
“Pie is comfort. Pie is nostalgia,” she says. In a word, Cromwell simply gets pie.
Following our interview, she presented me with a box. I had told her about Conrad, and she had made him a pie. It was a lovely surprise, but as I thanked her, I couldn’t help noticing it had a graham cracker crust.
Cromwell explained she’d switched from pastry to graham cracker because her customers prefer it. I shared that information with Conrad as I presented him with a slice, garnished (appropriately) with freshly whipped cream. I didn’t mention that even in Florida, where Key lime is the official state pie, graham cracker or pastry is an acceptable crust. Nor did I mention that I, personally, prefer graham cracker. I simply held my breath as he took the first bite.
“It’s … perfection,” he said.
