Today is Pi Day! While I much prefer to buy my pies and let some food processing robotic line somewhere handle pie crust and keeping the edges unburnt while getting the middle cooked through, when someone has dietary restrictions that don't allow for robot pie baking lines to labor for me, it means I have to cook it myself. Ughhhhhhh.

Here's a recipe that never lets me down. Crumble topping so I don't have to deal with that most finicky of pie crust edge burning annoyances.

See the notes section at the end of this recipe for the simple substitutions one needs to make this vegan.

Ingredients

• 1 store-bought pie crust [substitute homemade, but you are on your own for that]
• 1 cup all-purpose flour, 125 g
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, divided 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup [make your own from white sugar and molasses]
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided 1 tsp and 1/2 tsp
• four pinches kosher salt, 1/4 tsp
• 1/3 cup butter, softened (not melted)
• 2x 16-oz can peaches, drained and rinsed [substitute 3 pounds fresh peaches, peeled and sliced]
• 1/4 cup white sugar, 60 g
• 1/4 cup cornstarch, 30 g
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 8 shakes [substitute 1 Tablespoon fresh ginger]
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract [substitute 1 Tablespoon vanilla protein powder]

Materials

• either pie pan or cast iron skillet (I use the cast iron skillet because capsule kitchen)
• aluminum foil or a pie shield (I use aluminum foil because capsule kitchen)
• two mixing bowls
• baking scale or measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• mixing spoon
• non-convection oven
• refrigerator
• fork
• kitchen timer
• wire cooling rack
• potholders or kitchen towel (I use a bunched up kitchen towel because capsule kitchen)

Instructions

1. Defrost your store-bought pie crust (1) and use it to line your pie pan or cast iron skillet. Prick a few holes in the bottoms and sides of the crust with the fork. Set it aside.
2. Preheat the non-convection oven to 400°F.
3. Take out one of the mixing bowls to use to make the topping.
4. Into the bowl, put one part of the brown sugar (1/2 cup), all the flour (1 cup), part of the cinnamon (1/2 tsp), and all the kosher salt (4 pinches). Stir to ensure even distribution.
5. To this, add the butter (1/3 cup) and stir until everything is evenly mixed.
6. Put the mixing bowl with the topping into the refrigerator to chill. For now.
7. Take out your second mixing bowl. We are now going to make the filling in this one.
8. Open both of your cans of peaches (2 cans) and drain and rinse the peaches inside. Then put those into the mixing bowl.
9. To this, add the remaining brown sugar (1/4 cup), remaining cinnamon (1 teaspoon), and then all of the white sugar (1/4 cup), corn starch (1/4 cup), ginger (1/4 tsp, ground), and vanilla extract (1 tsp). Stir until it becomes a syrupy, goopy mess with obvious peach chunks in it.
10. Pour the filling into the prepared crust.
11. Remove the topping from the refrigerator and evenly cover the top of the pie. The topping won't be amazing at being spread, so you might wish to wash your hands thoroughly and then use them to smoosh down the topping into an even a layer of full coverage as possible. Don't worry about being perfect. You'll get a second chance at the topping.
12. Put the pie into the preheated oven and set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes. Take those 20 minutes to clean up from the previous baking efforts.
13. When the timer goes off, open the oven and take out the pie. Just for a moment.
14. When the pie is out of the oven, first use your mixing spoon to more evenly distribute the topping. See, I told you that you'd get another chance.
15. Then, apply thin strips of aluminum foil around the edge of the crust on your pie plate or cast iron skillet in order to act as a pie shield (or just apply a pie shield if you have one).
16. Then back into the oven it goes. Set a kitchen timer for an additional 40 minutes.
17. When the timer goes off, check that the filling is bubbly and the topping is browned. If so, you're done ... with this step. If not, back into the oven for more baking and check on the pie in 5 minute increments until the conditions are met.
18. Once the pie is done in the oven, put it on the wire cooling rack and remove the aluminum foil strips. Set the kitchen timer for 4 hours and let it cool. No matter how much you want to touch it, LET IT COOL.
19. Once cool, then cut and serve.

Notes

I like to doctor this recipe up by adding candied ginger to the pie filling. We just so happen to have it on hand thanks to The Mister's sweet tooth. Any dessert recipe which asks for ginger does well with candied ginger added just for yums.

To make this recipe vegan, substitute vegan butter for the regular butter called for in this recipe, and choose organic sugars as they are unlikely to have been cross contaminated with bone char. As tempting as it is to substitute a vegetable oil instead of the more expensive vegan butter, the browning on the topping comes from whatever magic is done to make vegan butter be vegan butter; if you are okay foregoing the browning then feel free to use oil. Also you'd of course have chosen a vegan store-bought pie crust or have made your own vegan pie crust. We've discovered that Walmart's Great Value Graham Cracker crust (in a pie tin, already!) is vegan and readily available.

Bibliography. So there I was needing to cook a vegan pie in order to go to a vegan pie Pi Day celebration and so I turned to my favorite vegan recipe source: Connoisseurus Veg. As per usual, to make it a keep-recipe, I unveganed it because real butter is for some reason cheaper than vegan butter, at least for now. I also had no desire to process fresh peaches when a robotic food production line could do that part for me, so I converted the recipe over from fresh peaches. And, as always, I changed the measurements into things that are easier for my brain to comprehend.