Most people are familiar with the infamous Jodi Arias, the woman who claimed she murdered Travis Alexander out of self deference. The famous fact about this case was that while she was “defending” herself she took pictures of the whole thing happening. I don't know about y’all but if I was in the midst of being “attacked” my first thought would not be to be documenting it via camera. But we’ll get into that more later...

Jodi Ann Arias was born on July 9th 1980 in Salinas, California. As we are born and raised in Southern California and pretty biased about it, we like to say that Central California is where the killers are. [ Although yall got some gorgeous landscape and beaches, also Big Little Lies, so it’s not all bad]. She had a pretty normal childhood except she claimed that starting at the age of  seven she received multiple beating via belt and wooden spoon from her parents. 

She attended Yreka Union High School [not to be confused with Eureka, tysm goldrush for California] only until the 11th grade where she dropped out. She earned her GED later on. This is where the camera mentioned early comes full circle. Jodi developed a knack for photography at age 10 and got more involved with it after high school taking part time jobs as a professional photographer. She also became a server where she met her boyfriend pre-Travis. They eventually bought a house in the Palm Desert together. After they fell through, Jodi moved to Mesa, Arizona for a little while and then back to Yreka, California to live with her Grandmother. 

Travis Victor Alexander was born on July 28th 1977 in Riverside, California [queue Southern California bias, we got a good one in this story.] He was raised by his grandparents who got him involved with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [Mormons] He has a pretty normal childhood and nothing too out of the ordinary. He graduated high school and then embarked on a two year mission trip with his Church. Upon his return he became a salesman and motivational speaker at the marketing company Prepaid Legal Services. This is where the Travis unfortunately meets Jodi Arias at a PPL conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. a relationship that would take his life. 

Their relationship lasted for a year and a half long distance. They would travel back and forth visiting each other in Arizona and California. You know that feeling when your friend starts to bring around someone new and you get bad vibes? ALL of Travis’s friends got that feeling. None of them thought it was going to last and claimed it was very rocky and Jodi showed signs of Stage Five Clinger/Crazy. During the time of their relationship Jodi converted to being a Mormon TWO MONTHS AFTER MEETING  and started practicing to win over Travis. Travis’s faith was very important to him. Eventually Travis realized Jodi was not the woman for him and started seeing other women. This is when Jodi brings out the crazy. She starts to stalk him and watch him through his windows and somehow Travis humors her and continues to hang out with her until she moves back to Northern California [y’all know how we feel about it]. They still continued communication after all of this happening.

Travis was set to travel to Cancun WITH Jodi on a work-related trip. He got some bad vibes leading up to the trip after all that happened and decided to change his companion to a different female. Knowing how crazy Jodi was, you can imagine how she spiraled off the deep end. Soon after a reported burglary was reported at her grandmother’s house [reminder she is staying with her grandmother at this time.] What was stolen was a .25-caliber automatic Colt pistol which to this day has never been recovered. This gun became important in this case since those exact same bullet shells were recovered next to Travis’s lifeless body. 

Jodi was traveling to Utah for a PPL conference meeting up with her co-worker Ryan Burns. She rented a car for the trip and evidence states getting gas in Yreka, California and noting that she would return it in Redding, California. She went on to visit some friends in Southern California [you know] before she went onto Salt Lake City. Now if y’all are not familiar with geography, that's okay. To get from Southern California to SLC you have to cross through Arizona. If you don't have your map out with pins and red string connecting all the dots and places like the couch crime solvers you are, Travis lives in Arizona. Now at this point, our girl Jodi crazy ex-girlfriends Travis and calls him many many times and leaves voicemails. She then proceeds to go onto SLC and returns the car respectively and it routinely get cleaned by the rental car company but not before the clerk notes that the floor mats are missing and there red stains in the car [rookie move Jodi.]

Sorry this is such a long story but we are getting to the good stuff now. Travis’s roommates realized he hasn't heard from him in a minute and people are inquiring about him since he never went to Cancun. His roommates finds a spare key to his bedroom and open the door to a scene they will never be able to wipe from their minds. Travis was all bloody, lying lifeless on the floor of his bathroom shower. They called 911 and the operator was suspicious of suicide but those friends that were suspicious of Jodi from the beginning knew it was her doing. They exposed her of her stalking and crazy ways. The police came and did a routine check of the house for evidence and this is where Jodi’s love of photography comes back into play. They find a newly purchased digital camera in the washing machine in the house. The recovered picture show Travis alive in the shower and then a bloody individual on the floor of the shower that is believed to be Travis. DNA from the blood was taken and processed; it contained both Travis and JODI [gotcha girlllll]

After a highly televised court case, Jodi was indicted to first degree murder in Maricopa County, Arizon on July 9th, 2008. The homegirl has the audacity to claim not guilty. First, she said she wasn’t even in Mesa on the day of the murder. Then, she told the police that two intruders broke into his house, murdering him and her escaping. THEN, two years after that she said she killed him out of self defense of domestic violence. Self defense doesn't look like 27 stab wounds IN THE BACK. 

After a lengthy trial and back and forth potential outcomes, Jodi Aria was found guilty after 15 hours of deliberation of first-degree murder. Travis’s family smiled and hugged and fell comfort in the outcome. 

 So how now the delicious part. How did we turn a woman who was a cold-blooded killer into a comforting baked good? We broke it down into flavor profiles. We introduce to you the oozy boozy dark cherry bourbon pie. Cherries are the national fruit of Utah [who knew?] and knew immediately with this fact, we’re making a pie. Bourbon was thrown in to add some depth to the already rich cherries. Alcohol in the mix represent Jodi’s act of pretending to be a mormon. Mormons do not drink alcohol in their religion. The lattice represents her tangled weave of stories. 

Hope you enjoy! We take our pie with a heaping scoop of Graeter’s  vanilla ice cream. 

This recipe is inspired by Sister Pie. A lovely Detroit based pie shop who has the most magical pies. 

Ingredients:

Crust:

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp Sugar

1 tsp Salt

1 cup unsalted butter [that's two sticks for you not willing to decipher all the numbers on the side of the paper]

½ cup cold COLD water with a dash of apple cider vinegar in it. 

Filling:

36 oz Dark Cherries [ We recommend fresh but we are in Ohio where produce is a little dodge sometimes so walk on down to the frozen section and grab some bags, just defrost before using!]

¼ cup bourbon or dark liquor of choice. We use our fav whiskey from Highbanks, a local distillery 

¼ tsp orange zest

¾ cup turbinado sugar. This is not regular sugar or brown sugar, it is sugar in the raw. This is important

¼ cup tapioca starch, cornstarch is a good sub if you don't want to commit to a whole bag in your pantry

¼ teaspoon. 

Alright let's do this.

1. Were gonna make the crust. Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in a big bowl. We like to use a chilled metal bowl to keep it chill. Mix. 

2. Cut your super cold butter into cubes and drop in the flour mixture. 

3. Using a pastry cutter to incorporate the butter into the flour until it resembles a parmesan cheese with a few peas in there. This sounds weird but y’all will see what we're talking about when you do it. 

4. Add cold water mixture into the bowl and stir and fold until it can hold together. We don't like to put all the water in at once just in case we don't need to use it all.  You do not want your dough to be too wet. 

5. Separate into two disks, wrap with plastic and set in fridge. Forget about it for a min or like two episodes of your fav murder show. 

6. Time to preheat the oven to 450. It sounds burn worthy but we will explain later. 

7. Let's make the mixture now. Grab those frozen cherries you probably forgot to defrost and dump them into a colander. 

8. Run until warm water until defrosted. Set in bottom of sink to let drain. 

9. Get a separate bowl  to combine bourbon [measure what you need, pour in a bowl and then pour yourself a drink, we won't judge], orange zest, sugar, tapioca starch and salt. 

10. When the cherries are done draining, combined them with the rest of the ingredients. Set aside. 

11. Now it's time to roll out that sweet buttery crust. Take one disk from your fridge and set on floured surface. Pound with rolling pin a few times [trust us] and then roll out in a circle large enough to cover the bottom of your pin tin. 

12. Take your second disk of crust form the fridge and do the exact thing as your first but this will turn into your lattice. Now we prefer lattice because #pretty, but you really have creative freedom with this. Feel free to use a cookie to cut vent hole or just slits with a knife. You can do lattice inspired by us or even thinner with braids mixed in. Instagram is a wild place for pie crust, get inspired. 

13. Time to assemble. Pour in your mixture into pie tin on top of the bottom crust making sure to spread evenly. 

14. Layer on your top crust, lattice or not, making sure the top crust covers the bottom crust for ½” over lap. 

15. You will want to tuck under the overlap on the edges to create the best part of the pie crust. Create a crimp using your fingers or a fork [youtube is a great source of how-tos for this]. We use our fingers because we love big crimps and cannot lie. 

16. Brush your pie with egg wash lightly and sprinkle turbinado sugar evenly all over crust. #crunchy

17. Set your pie onto a parchment lined baking sheet and set in lower rack of oven. Your pie will cook for 20 minutes at the 450 temperature and then you will lower the oven temperature to 350 for another 50 minutes. Your pie will be done when you its bubbly and the crust is golden brown. Enjoy!