Party Time. Excellent.

A few weeks ago, we announced the introduction of PJP parties in our quest for World Pie Domination.  And within a few short days, our social calendar started to book up quickly.  Our first event was scheduled for this past Sunday and rest assured, we partied like it was 1999. Because it was our first birthday party at PJP, we were a little uncertain about our expectations.  We only knew we had one goal - for our guests to have so much fun, they would leave wanting to come back and visit us again and again.  And we knew that we wanted a baking party to be an authentic experience.  Our first step was to set the baking tables with aprons and chef hats for each of the 12 guests.  From there, we worked to stock each place setting with everything one needs to roll dough and bake pie.

At our events, the guest of honor gets to choose the pie to be baked and on this occasion, our guest chose Dutch Apple.  After a brief monologue of our story, we launched into the baking.  Each guest found a ball of fresh dough at their station and Jeanne described how to flour the baking space and roll out the doll to the thickness she prefers...which is basically no thickness at all.  The woman only believes in exceptionally thin dough...to the point that she actually cleared each guest's dough thickness before they could continue to the next step.  There is no easy way out at PJP Buttonwood.  Even when you are a party guest that has brought wine to share.

Obviously, if you are baking in the PJP kitchen, you are treated like a Team PJP employee...meaning you even get to peel your own apples.  We are super thoughtful that way.  So while some guests peeled apples, some made dutch apple topping and then we all switched and worked until we were ready to assemble pie.  And by "we", I mean the party guests, because Jeanne and I basically got to drink wine and supervise.

(Bonus points if you noticed that in this picture, Jeanne is, in fact, drinking wine.)

And while each baby pie baked away in the oven, Jeanne taught the guests to make chocolate rolls.  You know how each family sort of has their tradition?  In ours, it is chocolate rolls.  A sheet of pie dough, covered with cocoa, sugar, and butter...rolled up and baked.  It is what we eat on Christmas morning.  It signals that whatever event is going along with the chocolate roll is a very important event, indeed.  And we were excited to share a piece of our family's history with our 12 new friends.

No party would be complete with out a wine and pie-infused rendition of "Happy Birthday" and so we gave the guest of honor a milk crate to stand on and everyone serenaded him...

And if this fun afternoon doesn't fully explain why Jeanne and I have the greatest jobs ever, I'm not sure anything ever will.  We basically got to make new friends, drink wine, and watch other people peel apples.  WIN-WIN-WIN.

Next up on our agenda is a birthday party for an 11 year-old and then a girl's night out event, both promising to be ridiculously fun.  Interested in making PJP Buttonwood the place for your next celebration?  All the details are here:  http://pjpies.com/birthday-parties/.

Once we had prepped together