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Leaves crackle underfoot and the early-morning air smells like an ice cube. It’s autumn. Time for the annual public library pie contest.

My mother did not bake ordinary pies. Creating a pie was a day’s event, begun with two knives cutting butter and shortening into flour until it resembled sand, a forgotten summer sight until its culinary resurrection. She floated from cupboard to bowl, bowl to oven with a grace befitting a ballerina. She sliced. She whipped. She dolloped. She made the house smell better than Willy Wonka’s factory.

And so, when I was nine years old, I thought my mother finally deserved public acknowledgement of her pie prowess. When I saw a poster announcing our library’s fall pie contest, I entered her name. When I returned home and told her, she was more excited than I was.

Which pie shall it be? The apple-cranberry? No, too predictable. The three-berry pie? No, out of season. Ahh, I know. The chocolate-amaretto chiffon pie.

Children aren’t supposed to have a taste for amaretto. I was the exception. The almond-flavored liquor enhanced the chocolate flavor so well, I thought I might faint. Her creation began with homemade chocolate pudding, then a tall dome of whipped cream, onto which she drizzled an amaretto-chocolate reduction. Slivered almonds and chocolate shavings dusted the top with such even precision, you might think she arranged each piece with tweezers. I do not know how we transported the pie unscathed, but we arrived and unveiled the masterpiece to such gasps of amazement, the librarians had to shush us.

The event boasted eight pies, but zero competition. An apple pie with a rustic crust appeared soggy and deflated. Mom’s hand-fluted crust would have made Martha envious. My teeth stuck together just looking at the shoo-fly pie. The chocolate-amaretto pie melted on the tongue.

A librarian instructed three judges to score the pies on a scale of 1 to 3 according to three criteria: appearance, taste and originality. Yes, yes and yes. She would win all three. I would be so proud. She would remember that it was I, her eldest daughter, who launched her pie celebrity.

The first sign that this would be a real contest was when one judge glanced at another’s appearance score for Mom’s pie. “Wow, you’re a tough cookie!” she said. Translation: Mom probably received a 1 from the Russian Judge instead of a well-deserved 3.

Tasting came next. The judges took one bite of each pie. There was tongue swishing, water gulping, and lip pursing. A gentle scribble, scribble on their note cards.

Finally, originality. With pumpkin, pecan, and plain ol’ lemon meringue, Mom’s fusion of almond and chocolate would take that category for certain.

Our entire family waited nervously for the awards to be announced.

“Third place: the shoo-fly pie!” A tiny, elderly woman shuffled to the front of the room and accepted a ribbon and a cookbook. She posed for the town photographer.

If Mom did not take second, then I knew first prize would be hers.

“Second place: the pumpkin pie!” A young mother smiled as she received a ceramic pie plate.

Hooray! Victory! A pie for the record books! A pie to launch a career! My mother, the world’s best baker! (Or, at least the best baker in this town of 20,000!)

“And the winner is…and we have to say, this was a unanimous decision…the apple pie!”

What? That sorry-looking blob? It’s just APPLE! Anyone can make an apple pie! It takes a creative genius to pair chocolate with amaretto (especially in 1979)!

The worst part of the defeat was that the woman who won was not even present. Yep, it was a drop-off pie.

Once the prizes were announced, the pies were cut and plates distributed. And which pie do you think disappeared first? Mom’s chocolate-amaretto chiffon. Our family snubbed the other pies and dug into our favorite.

In the end, I learned that public accolades aren’t important. After all, there’s really no accounting for taste.