It’s early on a Saturday morning in November, but Molly Herron is already hard at work receiving pies with elaborate lattice crust designs or elegant whip cream piping from hopeful bakers. She interacts and engages with each baker, getting them excited for the day ahead. While this is a bit out of her comfort zone, her passion for it makes it easy. 

From a young age, Ms. Herron knew she loved to bake and help others. 

“I was baking when I was little,” Ms. Herron said. “I would wake up earlier than everyone else and I would throw a bunch of things together and put it in the oven and then bring it to my parents, and my dad always took a bite.” 

Now, she is a social worker in Hyde Park and an organizer of the South Side Pie Competition. While seemingly opposite passions, they both allow for something Ms. Herron values the most: human connection and community building. 

“I’m intrigued at how and why baking works. I suppose I’m also intrigued at how and why people do what they do,” Ms. Herron said. 

Her pie-baking journey started in her mid-20s, when she and her husband decided to spend a year traveling around the United States in a pickup truck. They started in Maine, and to make some cash, they started selling blueberry pies and bread to boats that would pass by.

Ms. Herron said, “We would come up to the boats and people would say, ‘Oh we were just talking about you, and we were hoping you were going to come out!’” 

Little did she know, this would spark a passion and long commitment to pie baking — and would eventually lead her to discover the South Side Pie Competition from a flyer on the street. 

“I slowly learned how to make a pie, and I entered in 2012. I happened to win a blue ribbon, so I was sort of hooked, so then I entered every year,” Ms. Herron said. “I certainly didn’t win every year. I won pretty much only when I made a fruit pie. One year I got a grand champion, which was kind of fun.” 

She won the fruit pie category in 2012, 2014 and 2018. 

The South Side Pie Competition began in 2012 and features amateur bakers of all ages and experience and are then judged by professional pastry chefs. The proceeds from the competition go to the Hyde Park/Kenwood food programs. Since its founding, the competition has raised over $45,000 to fund the purchase of produce for the food programs. 

Ms. Herron began co-organizing the event in 2022 after the previous organizer was retiring and wanted to stop the competition.

“I thought, ‘Oh no you can’t do that,’” she said. “This is such a cool thing because what it is, is it brings neighborhood amateur bakers together, bringing their very best bakes, and then professional pastry chefs judge them. They get spectacular ribbons, and then the whole community comes together.”

The event features between 50-60 bakers; and over 500 people come to enjoy the pie and community aspect. 

“I’m a huge fan of community building, and I think it’s really really important, especially after the pandemic when people slipped back, and I really want people to come together again, and after the election, people are fracturing again,” she said. 

Ms. Herron’s love for social work came after pursuing other careers, but her passion for helping others has always been there. In college, she wanted to be an art thief detective but switched to wanting to be a painting conservator. This eventually led her to become a silversmith and making silver jewelry, all while being a caterer. Making a difficult decision, she quit silversmithing and after a painful year, she took a class in psychology, and realized it was her thing.

“Social work fit me really well because you think about the person in their environment,” Ms. Herron said. “It’s not just their diagnosis or their symptoms. You think about the reason they are feeling this way — it’s not because they’re a failure or they’re not trying; it’s because there are other factors involved. That really intrigued me,” Ms. Herron said. 

The intersection of her two careers — and passions — comes in the form of helping others and connection. Two of the things she values the most.

She said, “I suppose therapy, and [the competition], is all about human connection and about putting yourself out there.”