Celebrate Pi Day by Baking 3 Pies to Verify

Recently to celebrate my fav holiday, Pi Day on March 14th - get it 3.14 - I bake three different kinds of pies to have a party, but before the celebrants dig in, I do something amazing! I prove PI by taking the crust off the middle pie on the table and proving it completely crosses the diameter of all three!!! It is so fun and edifying to prove PI in this fun and tasty way. Now let me share three simple recipes I used to have a little PI / Pie variety:

1. Three glass or metal pie tins - or you can make one pie and remove it onto a plate, if you don't have 3.
2. Flour and butter for at least one pie crust + Graham Crackers and / or other pie crust options
3. Filling - from a can or your favorite pie filling, from fresh or frozen fruit, canned pumpkin or more

For the flour-based pie crust to prove pie, sift at least a cup and a half to 2 cups of flour with a fourth cup of sugar for a little more sweetness. Work in a half to a full stick of butter or a few tablespoons of coconut oil until you have a nice pea sized grain. Add a little milk or whipped cream to moisten the crust but don't make it wet. Now press it right into the pan. The grease should prevent sticking, but I like to grease the pie tin anyway, especially so the crust I purposely want to be a whole inch tall above the filling to prove pie doesn't stick.

You can simply empty some delicious cherry pie filling into your pie, make the pumpkin, apple, cherry or chocolate pie filling I've pictured, or try a lemon merengue pie, pecan pie, or any other of your own favs - as long as one of them is make with a tall crust that sticks above the filling, you can prove PI in the next step.

I like to bake the pie crust first in a convection over on the second to top shelf at about 350 degree F for about 10 minutes to make it set before adding the filling. Then I add the filling and turn down the heat to 300 degree F and bake the pie with filling for about an hour. The low temperature prevents the crust from over-browning. But you can also add foil to the crust sitting above the filling you are going to use to prove pie at half-time if it's already browned enough.

Once you've baked and cooled your three pies, it's time to party - and share the magic of PI! Put a pie with the flour crust that rises above the filling in the middle of the other two pies. Carefully cut off the crust between the filling and the top of the pie pan to get the complete circumference of the pie. Now place the crust across all three pies to prove it complete fills them, even if one of the side pies is a little bigger, since you have .14 more of a diameter to generate PI - in this fun and tasty way, all your guest now have a visual understanding of PI as 3.14 x d to get the circumference of a circle - the basis of a whole lot of fun mathematical magic in the world!

Obviously, the Greeks probably discovered PI by putting a string around the edge of any circle to measure the circumference, then crossing the circle diameter back and forth to get the ratio, to come to the conclusion that a string a circumference long would cross the same circle about 3.14 times - but it's a lot more fun using pies...