To pie fans, it’s a delicious and warming meal. To apprentice bakers it’s a challenge to reach perfection – and it all starts in a bakery learning the skills that make their pies stand out from the rest.

Entries are now open in the 2025 Bakels NZ Apprentice Pie Maker Awards, with apprentices around the country gearing up to test their skills.

They will be required to make two pie varieties – mince and cheese and gourmet meat.

Under the watchful eye of their bakery employer and training provider, the apprentices are putting into practice how to make top pastry with a good lift, base pastry that is the right thickness and fillings that taste great.

Mince and cheese might sound straightforward, but it’s got to have a flavour that lifts it above its competitors.

The gourmet meat filling is where apprentices showcase their initiative by creating their own unique flavour or choose to use a recognised flavour and do it exceptionally well.

In 2024 Beau Corric of Euro Patisserie in Torbay, Auckland entered the Bakels NZ Apprentice Pie Maker Awards with his Gourmet Meat entry of a venison pie that he’d developed after tasting a venison pie for the first time on a road trip.

Instead of duplicating the pie he’d tasted, he slow-cooked venison with cranberry and added roast vegetables and red wine sauce.

It proved to be a winning combination and along with scoring well in the other judging rounds, Corric’s two pies won him the national title of Bakels NZ Apprentice Pie Maker 2024.

“I’d definitely encourage other baking apprentices to give the Apprentice Pie Maker competition a go. It will push you outside your boundary, your comfort zone, but I’d say the risk is worth it,” said Corric.

NZ Bakels managing director Brent Kersel said the Apprentice Pie Maker Awards were open to any baking apprentice studying with a recognised training provider for their NZ Certificate in Trade Baking.

“When you are in baking industry training it always helps to test yourself against your peers.

“The Apprentice Pie Maker Awards do exactly that. We’ve seen a number of apprentices grow in confidence and progress well in their careers after entering this competition, and of course, if they win, it looks pretty good on their CVs.”

Entry details are at: https://www.nzbakels.co.nz/apprentice-pie-maker-2025/

Entries close on May 28.

Judging day is June 11. The winner will be presented with their award at the Bakels NZ Supreme Pie Awards on July 29.