Books and Tea

Impossible Pi(e)

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Christina
A freshly-baked impossible pie, still inside a white pie dish, resting on a black stovetop.

I’ve had a lovely day today. It’s Pi Day. I made pie. I went out to watch the re-release of Kiki’s Delivery Service on IMAX this afternoon with Mr. Booksandtea. I started crying during the opening and closing credits, for some reason, because movies about finding your calling, building community, and dealing with burnout have absolutely no relevance to me whatsoever.

Anyways, I frontloaded this year’s celebrations by making the pie before the movie, and eating it for dessert after we got home. This time, I made impossible pie, courtesy of B. Dylan Hollis’ first cookbook Baking Yesteryear.

The thing with impossible pie is that you don’t need to painstakingly crumble butter into flour to make crust, or roll anything out, or even cut anything. You just blitz the whole list of ingredients in one go, pour it into the pie pan, and it sorts itself out into layers inside the oven. It needs time to cool and set before serving — perfect for an afternoon jaunt where you feel unexpectedly emotional while trying to recapture your recently-vanished youth.

I took some liberties with the recipe by adding vanilla and almond extract to the mix, because I figured that no good self-respecting custard should go vanilla-less. I added almond just because I have it in my fridge. (Oddly enough, I bought the almond extract in the first place because I needed it for a different recipe from Baking Yesteryear.)

The end result was sweet, creamy, custardy, jiggly, and far too rich and delightful for something so impossibly lazy. Happy Pi Day!

A plain white pie pan sitting on top of a black stovetop.
I found this pie pan in an unopened box of ceramics my mom gave me when we first bought our condo. I am unreasonably delighted by having something so Martha-Stewart-esque in my home.
All the ingredients for the impossible pie recipe sit together, unmixed, inside a white mixing bowl.
This is the beauty of impossible pie: you just dump the whole thing into one bowl and go to town on it. I don’t have a regular blender, so I used an immersion blender instead and it turned out fine.
A white pie pan full of blended ingredients, sitting on a black stovetop.
The pie mix came up juuuust to the brim of the pie pan. Again, I am unreasonably happy with this piece of ceramic.
A freshly-baked impossible pie, still inside a white pie dish, resting on a black stovetop.
Oooh, ahhh. The impossible pie is fresh out of the oven! It’s perfectly golden and round, like the sun itself.
A slice of impossible pie sitting on a dessert plate. I am holding it in my hand and standing outside so the pie is bathed in the light of the setting sun.
The pie, fully cooled and sliced after we got home and ate dinner. I felt a little extra and wanted to capture this slice in its full glory on my balcony as the sun set.

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