When Joseline Ballard isn’t working as an engineer, she’s baking hand pies made out of a traditional flaky Ghanaian crust.
Ballard, a native of Ghana, moved to the U.S. about a decade ago and to Texas in 2018. And last year, she founded Kravs, which sells West African-inspired gourmet pies and snacks online and at the Dallas Farmers Market.
Before starting Kravs, she began sharing her pies with coworkers in 2019 and was overwhelmed by their response.
“They really loved it,” Ballard says. “They were like, ‘This thing is really good!’ They asked me to make them the crust of the pie just for them to use during the holidays.”
She soon received requests to make pies with sweet fillings, an American modification to the traditionally savory Ghanaian meat pies.
“I started playing around with the recipes, and so the first sweet pie was the apple pie,” Ballard says. “I still maintained the crust, which is very savory, and added the sweet fillings. [My co-workers] were like, ‘This will do very well at the Dallas farmers market,’ and I figured it would be a good way to tell people about the African story.”
Ballard then set out on a mission to launch Kravs as a way to not only share good food with the Dallas community, but to “change the narrative of who an African is or who a Ghanaian is,” through her traditional crust with a sweet twist.
Ballard remembers growing up in Ghana and learning to bake from her mom, especially during the Christmas season, when Ghanaians bake pound cakes and meat pies in large quantities to share with their neighbors.
“It takes some patience, and you have to have joy in what you’re doing, especially because we give it out,” Ballard says. “It’s only during the Christmas holidays that we really bake, so you need to have some love attached to it ... and whoever enjoys it — it should bring some smiles to their faces.”
Today, Kravs has a slew of sweet pie flavors. Kravs’ original pie is the Queen Pie, filled with apples, cinnamon and caramel candy baked in Ballard’s signature, handmade all-butter crust. Other flavors include berry cream, cherry, chocolate, almond, peanut butter and jelly, banana, raisin, Key lime and vegan coconut cream.
Ballard also recently expanded beyond pies to a snack she used to pick up on the streets of Ghana called kube, which means coconut in the Akan dialect. Kube is a chewy caramel coconut bite, which Ballard recommends eating on its own, with coffee in the morning, or as a topping on ice cream.
Ballard also tells the Ghanaian story through Adinkra symbols used in the Kravs branding. The symbols represent core values, such as the Hwe Mu Dua, which means measuring stick and represents quality.
Ballard’s dream is that Kravs will expand and have its own storefront. More than that, she hopes to be an inspiration for immigrants from all over the world.
“It also gives, as an immigrant, the hope that this is possible, that anything is possible, that the American Dream is very real,” Ballard says. “All you have to do is put in the hard work, and you’ll see the results. [Kravs] serves as an inspiration, as a motivation to other immigrants that see me.”
Kravs is open at the Dallas Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 920 S. Harwood Street, Dallas. Pies are available for pre-order at kravspie.com, and kube snacks can be purchased online at kubesnack.com. $24 for a box of six hand pies. $16 for two bags of kube snacks.
