Chelsea Keene got her start serving ice cream sandwiches out of a converted 1974 VW bus.
Back when she lived in Seattle, Keene co-owned the Cookie Counter, a “beloved” vegan bakery and ice cream shop, per the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, that went from bus to brick-and-mortar, gaining fans along the way.
When that shop closed in 2020, Keene returned to Minnesota, where she was born and raised, and she spent the last several years working other jobs. But something was missing.
“When I got back home, I was like, it’s kind of hard to go to a coffee shop and get a vegan thing with my coffee,” she says. She was happy to be back in the Midwest, but one advantage of Seattle was that “there was vegan stuff everywhere, any coffee shop you go to.”
You can find a lot of great vegan food in the Twin Cities, but there are only a few vegan bakeries—fewer still that distribute to area coffee shops. Keene figured she’d put her dairy-free baking skills to work again; she started working out of the pastry kitchen at Centro on Nicollet and in mid-June delivered her first order to Dogwood Coffee, where the team was instantly enthusiastic.
Front Porch Pies’ vegan baked goods are now available at all Dogwood Coffee and Backstory Coffee locations, and you can find hand pies at Caydence Records & Coffee in St. Paul. Keene is also at the Uptown Farmers Market on Thursdays (4-8 p.m.) and does occasional pop-ups, like a Pies & Pots event she and her neighbor, ceramicist Wendy Eggerman, have been hosting at Dogwood on East Lake Street. (You can follow Front Porch Pies on Instagram for the latest updates.)
Despite the name, Front Porch Pies does more than just pies—there are also cookies, muffins, scones, galettes, and bars. I’m partial to the soft, lemon sugar cookie ($3.50), which practically melts on your tongue, and the rye shortbread ($2.50) is a simple marvel, since butter is such a crucial component of the dairy version. The latter are perfection alongside a mug of coffee.
I’m never sure if it’s an insult to vegan chefs to hear constant comparisons to the “real” thing—not everyone is trying to imitate those flavors and textures exactly—but the flakiness of Front Porch’s blueberry ginger hand pie ($5.50) did make me muse aloud about the surprisingly buttery crust. And I was probably most blown away by Keene’s vegan pecan pie ($7.50 a slice), a gooey and decadent dead ringer for the dairy version, eggs and butter be damned.
Keene makes her own vegan butter with organic coconut and canola oils, which helps with that texture, and she uses local heritage wheat flour from Sunrise Flour Mill in North Branch, Minnesota. Most of her produce comes from local farms via The Good Acre in Falcon Heights, and she’d like to take advantage of their vegetables, adding savory vegan scones and hand pies in the future.
As for the name? Well, pies are meant to be shared—sometimes, on the front porch. But Pies & Pots has a pretty nice ring to it, too… a pie shop and ceramics store sounds kind of cute, huh?
“Of course, in my mind, I’m like, ‘Having a shop again would be so fun,’” Keene says, and maybe someday she’ll go brick-and-mortar again. But for now, you can find Front Porch Pies’ vegan baked goods at pop-ups and farmers markets.
Or, at a coffee shop near you.
Front Porch Pies
Find them: Uptown Farmers Market, Thursdays from 4-8 p.m.
Also available at: Dogwood Coffee, Backstory Coffee, Caydence Records & Coffee
