apple of my pie

every year at work we have our annual pi day pie contest, and this year was no different. i had actually planned to make a pumpkin pie this year, but since i didn’t have time to test it before hand, i chickened out at the last minute and decided to go with my first place winning pie from last year, apple of my pie. while i was gathering my ingredients, i thought i would make a blog post about it.

the recipe calls for 5 apples, but i always get 6 just in case one turns out bad, which i’m glad i did because one apple was badly bruised so i had to throw it out. peeling the apples is my least favorite part, but cutting them into thin slices is my favorite. i love the sound of the consecutive chop! it’s so crisp since the apples are very easy to cut through.

adding sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and some lemon juice, i mix them all in a bowl. i realized that i really need to buy bigger bowls because our largest one was very difficult to mix in and so i had a hard time not spilling some apple slices over.

i’m still relatively new at baking, so i opted with some pre-made crust. instead of doing a simple transfer, i decided to ball it up, re-roll it and make a design. last year my pie was so ugly (even though it won) so this year i wanted to jazz it up a bit.

i had a little extra crust so i decided to cut out a little pi symbol. i was so excited it turned out so cute! i was a debating using some food coloring on the pi symbol so it would stand out more, but i was really feeling lazy and didn’t want to have to cut the pi symbol out again.

i popped it in the oven. after taking this picture, i realized how badly i need to clean the light in my oven. does anyone have any cool tips for this?

and voilà! i was so excited that the pi symbol darkened a lot. it really emphasized it so in the end not having food coloring turned out alright. this morning i found it had collapsed a bit which was really disappointing. does anyone know how to prevent that? does the crust need to be thicker?

in the end, i brought the pie to work and it’s sitting on the counter. i hope that it gets good reviews again this year. do you have any exciting pi day traditions?

happy pi day! ❤