Pi Day Pie

In the summer, when the fruit is at the height of its season we like to buy a crate or two of peaches or apricots and make up a bunch of pie fillings that we stash away in the freezer to be used through the winter months. Pi Day is an excellent excuse to pull one of these buried gems from the cellar, make up a pie crust and have some pie.

A good friend of mine has a neat trick for rolling out pie dough that I finally remembered to try, and it worked out rather nicely. Place the dough between two silicon baking mats (I have "Silpat" mats) and use the rolling pin on the top mat. This lets you roll to your hearts content without the dough sticking to the rolling pin. Then you kind of peel the top mat away and flip the crust and bottom mat into place and peel the bottom mat away. Nifty.

With the crust done, just place or, depending on the amount it has defrosted, pour the filling into the shell.

I use the Joy of Cooking pie crust with 2 cups white whole wheat flour, 2/3 cup shortening chilled, 2 TBS butter, salt, cold water. This time I started with 1 TBS of vodka.

It being Pi Day, I did a decorative top crust with the symbol du jour excised. I baked at 350 to an internal temp of 200.

I find internal temp to be more informative with these since the filling may or may not be fully defrosted.

I need to remember this approach for Pi Inverse Approximation Day -- 7/22.

Update: Some more photos after it came out of the oven ...

(pi)(inverse pi)

Pi divided by 2

pi / pie

A slice of pi