Jessica Clark-Bojin remembers at one time having a reputation for her lack of cooking skills.

鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 crack an egg. I was shooed out at family gatherings,鈥� says the Vancouver native, laughing. 鈥滻 had no experience in a kitchen whatsoever.鈥�

Now Clark-Bojin is shaking up the baking world with her elaborate pie creations, which range from detailed celebrity portraits to towering three-dimensional 鈥減ie-scrapers.鈥�

The former filmmaker鈥檚 journey from kitchen klutz to pastry pro started with a New Year鈥檚 resolution to cut down on sugar in 2016, when she began experimenting with pies to sate her dessert cravings. What began as a creative foray has become a full-time gig.

鈥淚t鈥檚 the most fun job that I鈥檝e ever had in my life,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 never thought I鈥檇 be doing anything like this.鈥�

Clark-Bojin鈥檚 multi-tiered masterpieces include Calvin and Hobbes riding a wagon down a hillside and an Aladdin-themed castle. The self-described science fiction nerd has also concocted a glow-in-the-dark Tron apple pie and Star Wars themed fruit turnovers shaped like Jabba the Hut.

Along the way, Clark-Bojin has tapped into her science background as a former university physics student to develop new methods and materials. Her innovations include colouring pastry dough, creating pigments that glow in the dark and baking three-dimensional shapes.

鈥淭his isn鈥檛 cooking. This is chemistry!鈥�

The American talk show The Chew invited Clark-Bojin to New York to present a pie on the show in late 2016, which was followed by an invitation from the Food Network to start making videos for the cooking channel, she said.

Pies are especially challenging because pastry dough quickly becomes tough when overworked and its inconsistency means it often changes shape unpredictably in the oven, Clark-Bojin said.

She said one 鈥渁ha moment鈥� came while designing an alien face from the sci-fi franchise 鈥淧redator,鈥� when Clark-Bojin came up with a method of blending different layers of pastry together, 鈥渓ike modeling clay,鈥� using an egg mixture.

鈥淭hat opened a whole new world,鈥� she said.

Clark-Bojin said most of her baking gets done late at night after her five-year-old son, Cillian, is in bed. She described him as her harshest critic.

鈥淗e鈥檒l look at something that I鈥檝e been slaving over for days and I鈥檓 really proud of and he鈥檒l be like, 鈥淗mm. It鈥檚 not your best work, mommy,鈥� 鈥� she said.

Clark-Bojin doesn鈥檛 sell her pies directly. She supports her work by offering how-to guides and dough stencils for sale.

Her next task is to simplify her techniques.

鈥淢y mission with all of this is not just to be a snooty pie artist,鈥� she said, adding that the overall goal is to create a new industry.

鈥淚 want to teach other people and inspire other people to create cool things in this medium that they love with this food that they love.鈥�

Geordon Omand, The Canadian Press

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