Lauren Ko is the baker, artist, and author behind the modern geometric pie Instagram account @lokokitchen, and the accompanying book, Pieometry. Unlike most bestselling cookbook authors, her journey into making pies on an Instagram account with over 419k followers and having a New York Times bestselling cookbook was more of an accidental adventure than an intentional path. Before moving to Seattle, Lauren had no formal training. She had never even baked a pie. 

Lauren moved to Seattle in 2016, and was (as she says) “funemployed,” with lots of time on her hands. She lived right next to the West Seattle Farmers Market and made it a habit to go every week, picking up a fresh bouquet of flowers, and discovering produce that was grown locally in Washington. She was inspired by some beautiful pie designs that she found on Pinterest and decided to give baking a go. Her first pie was a simple plaid lattice apple pie, and while it was a successful project, it wasn’t an earth-shattering, life-changing moment for Lauren.  

She went on to get a job with Seattle Colleges and continued baking at home for fun. In August of 2017, she decided to start her Lokokitchen Instagram account, not in the hopes of going viral, but just because she didn’t want to clog up her personal account with constant posts of her kitchen creations. The first post was a geometric peach pie with a punny caption that, to Lauren’s surprise, amassed a couple hundred likes overnight.  

Although she was somewhat wary about all of the attention her posts had been getting, Lauren continued to post and her account continued to grow, and she became stronger in her craft, developing her signature spoke lattice design that has since been dubbed ‘the modern lattice.’ 

Eventually, Instagram account @designmilk reposted one of her pies to their 3 million followers. Lauren’s profile blew up almost overnight. Once she hit 100k followers in December 2017, she decided to quit her job and “ride the wave,” with no expectations, still not really sure how long-lasting her successes would be.  

It’s the visual appeal of her pies that has brought Lauren so much success. She doesn’t sell them, or ever plan on opening a brick-and-mortar pie shop, because she wouldn’t want to sacrifice the quality and care that goes into each one, which would be inevitable if she were to start mass producing them. Although her followers are drawn to the bright colors and geometric shapes, flavor is still the most important thing that Lauren considers when constructing her pies.  

“The flavor is always the bottom line,” she says. She is an artist, but her medium is edible, so she never sacrifices flavor just for the sake of a pretty design. And Lauren’s pies do get eaten. Although she doesn’t sell them, the pies she doesn’t eat herself get donated to fundraisers, or posted on a Listserv for her friends and family to claim them.  

When thinking about flavors and design, Lauren considers what flavors will complement each other, and what ingredients will bring color and contrast to a pie or tart. Even though her designs are crisp and calculated, Lauren is able to pivot her design choices based on the ingredients she finds and what’s available to her. If she’s planning on a contrasting design using two different colors of apples, and can only find one color, she would keep the same contrasting theme by peeling half of the apples and leaving the other half with the skin on. It’s this balancing act between being organized and precise, and creative and adaptable that makes Lauren (and her pies) so successful.  

Her designs are influenced by her ingredients, and her ingredients are influenced by seasonality and availability. Shopping locally and seasonally is important to Lauren, and you’ll notice local fruits and veggies featured frequently in her pies and tarts. In working with her to plan her cooking demo at the West Seattle Farmers Market, Lauren named a few of her favorite farms whose apples and pears she wanted to use. 

You can see Lauren’s artistic skills at work at the West Seattle Farmers Market on October 30th in honor of Applelooza 2022! She will be hosting an apple tart construction demo at the market, all made from local apples!