Rumor has it there’s going to be a no-holds-barred culinary throwdown here at Scienceblogs in honor of Pi Day. Personally, I need little excuse to make a pie. And the staffer needs little excuse to eat pie – particularly pecan pie. So here is my entry. . . .the “Yes, PeCan” Pi.

As pies go, this is a simple one that can handle some imprecision. It’s a little different every time I do it. And in the spirit of 3.141592-oh-whatever-who-cares, I embrace freely rounding off quantities whenever I feel like it.* In fact, I used my ubercool but uberimprecise Equal Measure to make this Pi:

“Yes, PeCan” Pi

Heat oven to 375 degrees F (~191 degrees Celsius).

Prepare a pie crust (use your family recipe. You can buy one if you absolutely must, but I don’t want to hear about it).

In a bowl, mix:

3 large eggs (approximately the volume of the brain of a T. rex)
just shy of 2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp turbinado sugar (sub more granulated sugar if you don’t have it)
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup unsalted melted butter (about one hundred fifty thousand poppy seeds’ worth)
3/4 cup dark corn syrup (about five thousand drops of water’s worth)
1/4 cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup (sub more dark corn syrup if you don’t have it)

Beat all of this for several minutes by hand with a whisk. Stir in:

about 1 cup pecan halves (about the amount of water in a bus-sized cumulus cloud)
1 Tbsp bourbon

Pour filling into crust. Bake 35-40 minutes (until filling is set but not cracked). You can cover the crust with foil until the last 15 minutes of baking to keep it from getting too dark.

Voila! It’s the Pi of change we’ve been waiting for!

*This might explain why my pecan pies don’t always turn out – although in my defense, correlation does not equal causation. (The staffer says we need to eat a larger n.)