Every holiday when pies are baked and consumed, I try to make a new pie vent. Pie vents help steam escape from baking pies to avoid boiling over. Some even use ceramic pie birds for this purpose.

I prefer the carving method. Here are this year’s vents, featuring the Transformers’ Autobot and Decepticon emblems. Below that is a Hello Kitty pie from a couple years ago. I’m told that the latter pie tasted cute when we ate it.

published December 26, 2007