Sadly, @dan, that picture was post-bake. As I mentioned somewhere else in the reply stream, in my haste to bake it, I forgot to do an egg-wash on top which would have darkened it up a bit (plus, throw in shoddy lighting and a cellphone camera, and you don’t exactly have the full food-porn monty, when it comes to image quality 
On the plus side, it was delicious, and the lasering had no affect on taste whatsoever - bu certainly added to the visual appeal!
Man, you are SO making me want to go bake a pie right now. 
That is what I thought at first, but is it legal to ship something containing lard to the West coast?
I baked a cheesecake this afternoon. It won’t be cool enough to do that again for a while. I really want to laser one.
Natural lard is perfectly fine in Ca.
Trans Fatty Acids (ie fake lard) are banned from restaurants.
Manteca, Ca is so named because of a misspelling on an early railroad map that stuck around and was eventually adopted as the official name.
Manteca means butter/lard in spanish.
this is fun, i am surprised you did such a large design; how long did it take? i think one interesting thing to try is to engrave additions like leaves, etc. and add them to the dough after.
psh, lard. yes, flaky, but nothing tastes quite so good as all that butter.
for doing pie crusts, i think i’d probably form a top crust and put it in the freezer, then go straight to the laser. helps avoid the butter separating out.
It was a 20 min cut. And I did it the totally lazy way… it was no-name grocery store brand pie dough, because I just didn’t have time to make it from scratch like I normally would. I was worried it’d get too soft sitting that long in the laser getting cut, but it was fine by the time I was ready to put it over the body of the pie.
I would definitely try actually cutting shapes out of dough and building up more “3D” ornate tops as a next attempt.
Did you score, engrave, or cut? Sorry if you said what you meant ie. “cut”.
It was actually a “cut” operation, yes. This was one of the first things I’ve done since I got my unit, so I’m still learning the ins and outs of the effects of the various settings Plus, didn’t have the spare crust to run several test patterns on it - just jumped right in and it happened to be a cut.
Nicely done! 
It had to be done 
I make lard lye soap 
LOVE IT!! 
Thank you very much for doing that AND it’s a great picture too!
Haha thanks for the inspiration!!
I go to Starbucks all the time and I kept thinking how cool it would be to see different patterns on there vice just sprinkling the powders all over. I was thinking of all sorts of themes to be sprinkled on there. Thanks again for doing it!
I agree…I would love to see a design on my coffee whenever I order it! How fun would that be?
Now I want to make soooo many more 
put them in little wood filter frames, build a filter box, and put them next to the coffee machine at work. you’ll be a hero!
like one of the old enlarger filter boxes.
Me too. But I really prefer tallow. I have to render that myself so that alone is a full day process. I get good white fat from the butcher and do a 3 gallon pots on the gas grill’s side burner.
I usually do soap twice a year and I’m set. I like mixing the oils for the effect I want. The rest of the family think it’s “creepy” using my soap. 
So I also spend mega-bucks on Lush knowing mine is as good but can’t convince them. I get a lot of “growing up Amish” snark 
My dad liked to dabble in old-time country arts like soap making (mind you, he was a city boy) when I was growing up, but he didn’t always get it quite right. Mom had to save beef fat for the soap, but it was never very clean. Then he made his own caustic from wood ash. He made soap, all right, but the end result was a weird combination of slightly oily with a lot of grit. Great for taking off that dead layer of skin (and some live ones too).
I don’t go that far. I buy my lye from the hardware store (or soap supply store). I don’t react well to a lot of commercial perfumes and fragrances so making my own lets me control that with essential oils instead of fragrances/perfumes. Soap is actually better for your skin than a lot of the “soap” sold in stores that’s really detergent based. Those will strip the skin of oil which makes your skin dry so they can sell you body lotion 
