Next generation of Piedts turns out pies at family farm

The Piedt family farm has been in the growing business for 175 years. Now it’s growing a business for 19-year-old Amanda “Mandy” Piedt.
 
Mandy Piedt, a 2010 Berrien Springs High School graduate, is operating a licensed bakery from the basement of her grandmother Dorothy Piedt’s home on the farm, and selling her sought-after goodies locally and as far away as Chicago.

Piedt bakes as many as 85 pies a week. For Thanksgiving alone she had orders for 50 pies.

Along with her brother, Ryan, 20, who farms with his father, Piedt is now the sixth generation to work on the 300-acre homestead purchased in 1835 in Eau Claire.

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Obtaining the kitchen license – which required inspections for sanitary conditions, electricity and water – became the goal of her final high school senior project. She learned bookkeeping from her mother.

And so Amanda Marie’s Bakery was born.

She started with made-to-order cakes, both sheet and layer cakes, and soon branched out into pies, cupcakes, jams and jellies, caramel apples and caramel corn.

She gets all the free fruit she needs from the farm, and bakes a variety of pies with whatever is in season. Her specialty is a caramel apple pecan pie. She also bakes cream pies.

She also creates cakes for weddings, birthdays and other special occasions.

To find out where to buy Amanda Marie’s pies and cakes, check out the rest of the story.

Source: Herald-Palladium