50 Pies You Should Be Making For Pi Day

March 14, aka Pi Day, is meant to be a celebration of all things mathematical, especially the magical number 3.14 (etc., etc. ad infinitum) that helps us calculate the circumference of a circle. Or maybe it's the diameter – math wizzes, we ain't unless those calculations occur in the context of a recipe. The reason Pi Day is a holiday that even arithmophobes can love is that it also honors our favorite circular dessert, and for this, we say thank goodness for serendipitous homophones!

We've rounded up (see what we did there?) quite the selection of pie recipes in honor of the day: fruit pies, nut pies, cream-filled pies, chocolate pies, miniature pies, and even some savory pies. There's also one mystery pie that comes courtesy of Guy Fieri that we're not entirely sure how to categorize. No matter which pie you bake, the most difficult math problem you'll need to solve is whether to divide it into 6 or 8 pieces. If you prefer to avoid geometry altogether, though, you could always just eat the whole thing yourself! (Umm, we're just referring to the mini pies, of course.)

You know the expression "easy as apple pie?" We've always wondered what genius thought that one up. Obviously, someone who outsourced their baking, since making an apple pie is hardly an effort-free enterprise. This recipe takes some of the work out by using pre-rolled refrigerated pie dough, although if you want to simplify things even more, you may want to bail on the lattice in favor of a plain top crust. This apple pie, after all, is so appetizing that no one will care how fancy it looks.

Recipe: Easy Apple Pie

Lemon meringue pie may seem like kind of a challenge, and we're not going to lie – it is more complicated than most other types of fruit pie. Still, the lemon curd filling and fluffy meringue topping really aren't all that difficult to make, plus we're going with a crumb crust here so there's no need to bother with rolling and shaping pie dough. The crumbs are made from crushed graham crackers, which make for a not-too-sweet contrast to the pie's sugary topping, and as an added bonus we stir in some ground almonds, as well.

Recipe: Lemon Meringue Pie

Rhubarb, sadly, is not in season yet in early March, but that doesn't mean you need to forego rhubarb pie if that's your favorite kind. Frozen rhubarb is available year-round, and it works just fine in this pie. We must admit, though, that it may be a bit of a misnomer to call this recipe rhubarb pie, as it also contains strawberries. That would make it a strawberry rhubarb pie, but nomenclature aside, there's nothing wrong with that as these two types of produce make for a perfect pairing.

Recipe: Simple Rhubarb Pie

Feeling a little nutty on Pi Day? Then the obvious pie choice is pecan. This southern specialty is super quick and easy to make with our recipe – not only is the crust pre-made, but the filling is as simple as stirring pecan pieces into a base made from melted butter, sugar, eggs, and corn syrup. The best part of making pecan pie (besides how wonderful it makes your kitchen smell) is that it's a single-cruster, so it's practically guaranteed to come out looking great even if your dough-rolling skills aren't quite ready for prime time.

Recipe: Easy Pecan Pie

Pi Day isn't all about the dessert course, you know, or at least it need not be. You can make a complete meal out of it by baking up a main course such as this cheese-topped, cornbread-crusted tamale pie. The filling in this recipe is made from ground beef cooked in tomato sauce along with onions, bell peppers, olives, and corn. It's not spicy at all since there's only the mildest hint of heat from chili powder, but you can swap out the mild peppers for jalapeños if you'd prefer your pie más caliente.

Recipe: Beef And Cornbread Tamale Pie

Buttermilk on its own is an acquired taste and one that many people don't bother to acquire. When used in baking, though, its tanginess adds flavor to biscuits, pancakes, and even this old-timey pie. Buttermilk pie is made from budget-friendly pantry staples, which made it a popular dessert back during the Great Depression, but today's soaring food prices make it well worth revisiting. If you're on the fence about buying buttermilk for baking purposes when you don't drink the stuff, here's a suggestion: Freeze whatever's left over, that way it will keep until the next time you want to make biscuits, pancakes, or another buttermilk pie.

Recipe: Classic Buttermilk Pie

This pie is a double-chocolatey delight since not only is the filling a rich, dark chocolate pudding, but the crumb crust is made from crushed Oreo-type sandwich cookies. To top it all off, there's a layer of sweetened whipped cream as well as a sprinkling of, yes, more chocolate in the form of a shaved candy bar. If you really want to get cute, you can always arrange the chocolate shavings to form the shape of a pi symbol.

Recipe: Chocolate Cream Pie

Tiny food is so cute! That's not the only reason we love it, though, since it's also perfect for portion control. This mini cherry pie recipe is especially well suited for anyone who'll be celebrating Pi Day on their own. If you bake up a batch of these itty-bitty two-ingredient tarts and eat one in honor of the holiday, you'll have leftovers to pack in your lunch for the rest of the week.

Recipe: Mini Cherry Pies

Many pot pie recipes call for using a casserole dish or baking pan, but somehow having a rectangular pie for Pi Day just doesn't seem right. Pi, after all, is not meant for measuring squares! These KFC copycat pies, though, are sufficiently circular for Pi Day purposes and they taste pretty darn good, too. What's more, these personal-sized pies make for a complete meal with meat, vegetables, and starch, plus it's easy to freeze any leftovers to enjoy at a later date.

Recipe: Copycat KFC Chicken Pot Pies

Egg custard pie dates back to the 19th century, so it's a great choice if you want to have a good old-fashioned Pi Day party just like the ones your great-great-grandparents used to throw – or would have if the holiday had been around back then and they were really into math. As it is, they probably enjoyed this simple vanilla-flavored cream pie as an everyday dessert, and you may find that it deserves a place in your regular recipe roster, as well.

Recipe: Classic Egg Custard Pie

While a true key lime pie would be made with key limes, this fruit may not be available in mid-March so you can make a key-style lime pie with just plain lime juice, instead. In fact, you can even use bottled lime juice if that's more convenient. Stir it into some condensed milk and Cool Whip (or the generic version thereof), plop the filling in a store-bought graham cracker crust, and voila! You just made yourself a tangy, tasty pie. The fifth ingredient is nothing more than a sprinkling of lime zest, but can always skip this decorative garnish if you didn't squeeze your own lime juice.

Recipe: 5-Ingredient Key Lime Pie

There are two main types of chocolate pie, the first one being filled with creamy chocolate pudding and the second filled with something that more closely resembles brownie batter. This pie is the latter type, so it's incredibly rich and absolutely delicious. If you want to improve upon near-perfection, though, we suggest stirring in half a cup of chopped walnuts. Oh, and don't forget to top the pie off with a big blop of whipped cream.

Recipe: Old Fashioned Fudge Pie

If you're a true Food Network devotee, you may have implicit faith that every concoction dreamed up by a famous chef is a surefire winner. In that case, you probably won't balk at the description of this one-of-a-kind pie once you learn that it was created by Guy Fieri. If you're more of a skeptic, though, you may be a bit dubious about the idea of apple pie topped with hot dogs, bacon jam, and mustard. Is it meant to be a main course, a dessert, or some kind of unholy hybrid of the two? We can't say for sure, but these miniature versions of Fieri's pie mashup will definitely make for a unique addition to your Pi Day festivities.

Recipe: Guy Fieri's Apple Pie Hot Dogs

You may have heard about bean juice – aka aquafaba – being used as a baking ingredient, but how about baking with actual beans themselves? Meet the bean pie, a dessert that dates back to the 1930s and has long been associated with the Black Muslim community (including Muhammad Ali, who had a hard time passing up his favorite dessert). While bean pies are traditionally made with navy beans, our recipe uses cannellini instead. You'll find the taste quite similar, though, particularly in combination with the cinnamon and nutmeg that are used to flavor the filling.

Recipe: Creamy Bean Pie

If you've never tried sweet potato pie, it tastes quite a bit like pumpkin pie. In fact, if you were to add some pumpkin pie spice to this recipe, you'd have something pretty close to the Thanksgiving staple. Instead, we're going in a slightly different direction by omitting the nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon (a bold move with this last-named ingredient, we admit, as it seems to feature prominently in many American desserts) and flavoring the mashed sweet potatoes with nothing more than vanilla and maple syrup. Not only does this pie have a rich, yet subtle, flavor, but it's also packed with antioxidants that will help to make your Pi Day celebration an extra-healthy one.

Recipe: Classic Sweet Potato Pie

While coconuts may be grown in tropical climates, dried coconut has long been available in stores year-round so it's an ingredient that's well-suited to any season – even the middle of March, which can't ever seem to make up its mind whether spring is just around the corner or it's still the middle of winter. This tasty triple coconut pie has a filling made from flaked sweetened coconut mixed with coconut milk (from a can, not a carton) and is topped off with a sprinkle of toasted coconut to add a little color contrast.

Recipe: Classic Coconut Cream Pie

This pie makes for a savory twist on Pi Day festivities with its filling made from cheese, onions, and tomatoes. The pie itself bakes up to be somewhat quiche-like, although technically it's not a quiche due to the lack of eggs. It could make for a light lunch with a side salad or bowl of soup, but for a Pi Day dinner, you could serve it as a side dish for the main course (perhaps mathematical meatballs or geometrical goulash).

Recipe: Traditional Tomato Pie

In Sicily, ricotta-based sweet pies are a typical Easter dish, although they are very often made with rice. Our version omits the rice to make for a pie filling that tastes more like cannoli and has almost a cheesecake-like consistency. If you're preparing in advance for a Pi Day party, this ricotta pie is a good pick since it doesn't need to be warm when you eat it. In fact, it tastes great straight out of the refrigerator.

Recipe: Sicilian Easter Pie

Chess pie sounds like some kind of medieval abomination where, instead of four and 20 blackbirds, you get a crust stuffed with knights, bishops, and pawns. Instead, it's just a plain, unadorned pie that dates back to colonial times. Interestingly enough, one of the earliest recipes comes from Martha Washington, aka the first First Lady.  FLOTUS No. 1 didn't call it chess pie, though, but referred to it as "cheesecakes without cheese curd," which might tell you something about the flavor and texture. Chess pie makes a great clean-out-the-pantry dish since, in addition to typical cream pie ingredients like sugar, flour, milk, eggs, and butter, it also includes a small amount of cornmeal as well as the type of plain white vinegar that you might keep on hand for cleaning purposes.

Recipe: Classic Chess Pie

While hand pies are fun, they're generally not round and thus aren't quite what we have in mind for Pi Day. These portable, personal-sized apple pies, however, are baked in muffin cups and thus retain their circular pie shape. They're a great dessert to make if you don't have enough apples for a full-sized apple pie since this recipe manages to stretch just two apples to fill a dozen small pies.

Recipe: Mini Apple Pies

This chocolate pudding pie is two desserts in one, but only requires four ingredients to make -– now that's the kind of math we can get behind! According to our calculations, 1 box of pudding mix + 3 cups of milk = creamy chocolate filling. Add 1 pre-made crust, divide into slices, and you're all ready for Pi Day.  Wait, you say, where's ingredient No. 4? That would be the whipped cream that gets squirted on top. While it's technically not a part of the pie, it helps to multiply the "mmm."

Recipe: Chocolate Lover's Pudding Pie

Tacos and pie might not sound like a match made in food truck heaven, but you'd be surprised at how well they can come together in a single crust. This pie filling consists of chili-seasoned ground beef combined with cilantro, salsa, scallions, sour cream, and tomatoes and then topped with shredded cheese. As for the shell, that's just your standard pre-baked pie crust, although you could make a crumb crust out of crushed tortilla chips if you want something even more taco-like.

Recipe: Easy Baked Taco Pie

According to the long-ago chart-topper "Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy," shoofly pie "makes your eyes light up [and] your tummy say howdy" despite its rather unappetizing moniker. While you might think "shoofly" refers to the fact that this sticky-sweet pie is just the kind of thing that would have attracted annoying insects back in the days before refrigeration, it's also likely that the pie might have been named after an old-time brand of molasses as this is one of its main ingredients. If you're a fan of molasses cookies, you should give this pie a try.

Recipe: Shortcut Shoofly Pie

Pumpkin pie appears on bakery shelves and restaurant menus from August through November and is practically de rigueur for Thanksgiving celebrations, but by early spring (or late winter, whichever you consider March 14 to be) it makes for a rather unexpected pie choice. Still, it's quite easy to make as long as you're using canned pumpkin and a refrigerated pie crust, so it can be an easy addition to any Pi Day party. Plus, as pumpkin pie is traditionally open-faced, it will look pretty cool (in an uber-nerdy way) if you want to top it with a pi symbol fashioned from leftover dough bits.

Recipe: Pumpkin Pie

Crustless coconut pie has a few other names it goes by, these being "miracle" and "impossible" pie. Why the incredulous accolades? These refer to the fact that the ingredients are all blended together, but as the pie bakes they separate to some extent and give the appearance that the pie has formed its own crust. While there are a number of crustless pie variants, coconut custard is the original, as its recipe seems to date back to a long-ago Bisquick box. There's no need to buy Bisquick to bake our version, though, as we're mixing our own flour, baking powder, and butter for a scratch-made pie.

Recipe: Crustless Coconut Pie

Yes, we all know that peaches aren't in season yet as stone fruits are more of a spring/summer thing. Still, it's a sure bet that sliced peaches can be found in most supermarket frozen food aisles, and there's no reason why you can't use them to make this pie. As a bonus, you'll save yourself some time by skipping all the peeling and pitting that's necessary if you use fresh fruit. If you're really in a rush, you can even use pre-made crust instead of rolling your own dough, as well. Even with these shortcuts, a peach pie in March will no doubt be welcomed as a delightful foretaste of balmier days to come.

Recipe: Fresh Peach Pie

Leftover turkey may seem like something you'd only have in the refrigerator during the weeks following Thanksgiving and Christmas, but turkey breast or tenderloin can make for a fine dinner at any time of year. In fact, we'd suggest that you plan such a dinner around March 12 or 13. Why such oddly specific dates? Because you can then use the leftovers to make a delicious turkey pot pie for Pi Day on the 14th!

Recipe: Comforting Turkey Pot Pie

What makes a Dutch apple pie different from an all-American one? Dutch apple pies are the ones with a crumb topping. Not only does this make for a tasty alternative to the standard two-crust pie, but it also lets you skip the effort of rolling out and crimping that top crust. As this pie recipe uses a store-bought crust for the bottom, it's about as foolproof as homemade apple pie's going to get.

Recipe: Simple Dutch Apple Pie

While this is the second strawberry rhubarb pie recipe on our list, you can never have too many of these in your recipe files. What makes this one a bit different from the previous recipe is that the other recipe went heavier on the rhubarb, whereas this one uses roughly equal amounts. The pie shown here also has a lattice crust, although if you'd rather not bother with weaving dough strips, you can feel free to go with a crumb topping here, as well.

Recipe: Sweet And Tangy Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

While Pi Day might take place some six weeks prior to the annual Run for the Roses, it's still a great time to enjoy a slice of the very best pie ever to be named after a horse race. Okay, to be honest, we have no idea whether there are any other pies named after horse races, but we'd eat the hell out of Derby Pie even if it were called mud pie instead. It's pretty much the pie equivalent of a Toll House cookie, and what's not to love about that? If you don't want to add the bourbon called for in this recipe, though, you may feel free to skip it as the original derby pies do not include this ingredient.

Recipe: Easy Derby Pie

Sure, peppermint is generally thought of as a winter holiday flavor, but Pi Day is a (late) winter holiday, so there's no reason you can't bake a peppermint pie for the occasion. Or rather, not bake one, as this recipe doesn't involve your oven at all. The pie crust is made of crushed crumbs and butter (you can melt the latter in the microwave), while the filling is concocted from cream cheese, whipped cream, and crushed peppermint candy. Check the cupboards – there's a chance you've got a few candy canes left over from last year, and this pie is a delicious way to use them up before Christmas comes around again.

Recipe: No-Bake Peppermint Pie

Fresh blackberries are generally available all throughout the year, courtesy of the produce transportation professionals who ensure that we cold-climate residents don't get scurvy in wintertime due to fruit deprivation. Long-haul truckers, this pie's for you! In fact, it's for everyone who enjoys the delightfully summery taste of blackberries at the tail-end of a too-long winter. All the berries need is a little sugar and lemon to bring out their flavor to make a perfect pie filling.

Recipe: Easy Blackberry Pie

Crawfish pie is a Cajun classic, although if these crustaceans are not available, this pie works just as well with shrimp, too. The filling is made with the holy trinity of celery, bell peppers, and onions in addition to the shellfish, and of course there's a generous sprinkling of Cajun seasoning. Since this recipe is for mini pies, the filling is encased in tart shells, but if you don't want to fiddle around with a bunch of little pies, you can always make a full-sized single-crust one instead.

Recipe: Mini Crawfish Pie

What makes an Atlantic Beach lemon pie different from its better-known cousin, the lemon meringue pie? Well, the absence of meringue, for one thing. For another, this pie has a rather unique crust that's made with crushed saltine crackers mixed with butter and sugar. Sounds a bit weird, maybe, but the tangy-sweet pie filling combined with the slightly salty crust actually works really well. As this pie is super easy to make, why not go ahead and try something new this Pi Day?

Recipe: Atlantic Beach Lemon Pie

While strawberries often appear in pies in combination with rhubarb, this berry is worthy of a pie of its own, and no one understands this like Shoney's. One of the restaurant chain's most popular desserts is a strawberry pie that looks just as good as it tastes, with the ripe red berries glistening in a Jell-O filling. Yes, Jell-O is the not-so-secret ingredient in this recipe, one that ensures the pie is incredibly easy to make. One note about the ingredients, though: No need to knock yourself out looking for an "8 ½-inch sweet pie crust" since a 9-inch (non-sweet) deep-dish crust will work perfectly. Shoney's uses a plain pie crust, but a graham cracker, cookie crumb, or even a coconut crust could make for a delicious substitution.

Recipe: Copycat Shoney's Strawberry Pie

This recipe actually manages to combine four desserts in one. It's a multi-layered pie (albeit one cooked in a springform pan) with an Oreo cookie crust. The filling consists of a bottom layer of cheesecake, also Oreo-flavored, as well as a top layer of chocolate pudding. If you really want to go all out, you can always make it into a quintuple treat by serving it with a scoop of ice cream (cookies and cream flavored, of course).

Recipe: Oreo Pudding Pie Recipe Everyone Needs To Indulge In

If you're bananas about a certain yellow-skinned fruit, you're sure to find this pie a-peel-ing. Plus, it really is as easy as the name proclaims. All you need to do is mix up some instant banana pudding, stir in whipped topping to make it extra-creamy, plop it into a graham cracker pie shell, chill it, and finally top it with sliced bananas. Now it's all ready to toss into a circus clown's face slice and serve for Pi Day.

Recipe: Easy Banana Cream Pie

If there was a holy trinity of pies, we'd hazard a guess that all three would be fruit ones. Apple and cherry would undoubtedly make the cut, while blueberry would round out the trio. Blueberry pie is an absolute classic, whether it's made with the fresh berries that are available year-round or, in a pinch, with frozen ones. This pie is flavored with a little bit of lemon juice as the tartness helps to bring out the berries' flavor, but you can leave out the cinnamon if you don't feel that this spice pairs well with berries.

Recipe: Blueberry Pie

Frozen beef pot pies are a guilty pleasure for many of us – they're actually pretty tasty, but certainly not something you'd serve to company. Homemade beef pot pie, on the other hand, requires considerably more effort to make, but it's even tastier than our frozen favorites and the end result is something that you can be proud to dish up for a Pi Day dinner. 

Recipe: Homemade Beef Pot Pie

Peanut butter and chocolate go together, like, well, strawberries and rhubarb, so of course this peanut butter pie has a chocolate crumb crust. The filling combines peanut butter with cream cheese and whipped cream, but it's got some hidden chocolate, as well, in the form of chopped-up peanut butter cups. As a final touch, extra melted chocolate is drizzled over the top, making this pretty much a peanut butter cup in pie form. Sounds good to us!

Recipe: Easy Peanut Butter Pie

We're all familiar with lemon meringue and key lime pies, but other types of citrus really don't make up a large share of the pie market. While grapefruit pie doesn't sound too good, orange pie, on the other hand, is a very good idea indeed. The orange pie in this recipe has a filling that's sweet and creamy and pale orange in color, yet the flavor is slightly more Sour Patch Kid than Creamsicle thanks to the addition of lemon juice.

Recipe: Simple Sour Orange Pie

'Twas the night before Pi Day and all through the house, not a creature was stirring except for a panicky cook who was just now remembering that they had to bake a pie by morning. Luckily, they had this recipe for no-bake pumpkin pie, so they just stirred together some cream cheese, canned pumpkin, sugar, spices, and whipped topping, bunged it into a graham cracker crust, stuck it in the freezer, and went to bed. Merry Pi Day to all, and to all a good night!

Recipe: No-Bake Pumpkin Pie

This recipe may bear Gordon Ramsay's name, but were he to read it, he'd probably have several unprintable things to say. While the recipe adheres to Ramsay's original for the most part, we did make a wee change that he didn't (and wouldn't) approve. The Scottish chef takes a literal approach to this traditional recipe, insisting that anything called shepherd's pie be made with lamb (although it's possible that mutton would pass muster, as well). Here, however, we're going an unconventional route by using ground venison. If you're fresh out of deer meat, you can always opt for Ramsay-approved lamb or even go with ground beef, although technically in the latter case what you'd have would be cottage pie.

Recipe: Gordon Ramsay's Shepherd's Pie

Yay, another strawberry pie recipe! This one is pretty simple – no rhubarb, no Jell-O, no creamy fillings or elaborate toppings. No topping whatsoever, in fact, not even a top crust. All you're doing here is blind-baking a pie crust (store-bought is fine), then filling it with strawberries that have been simmered with sugar and lemon juice and thickened up with a little bit of cornstarch. If you want to avoid using the oven altogether, you could even pour this same strawberry filling into a graham cracker or cookie crust, instead.

Recipe: Easy Strawberry Pie

The huckleberry pie in this recipe is, as advertised, quite easy to bake. The crust is a frozen one, while the simple filling consists of berries simmered with cornstarch and sugar. The not-so-easy part of making the pie may come when you try to hunt down the huckleberries, though, as even the frozen kind (which is what we're using here) isn't easy to source unless you live on the west coast. While the huckleberry may be the state fruit of Idaho, it's not nearly as widely distributed, as those famous potatoes. Still, should you happen to snag a bag of huckleberries in time for Pi Day, now you know just what to do with them.

Recipe: Easy Huckleberry Pie

While pecan pie is practically perfect, there is one thing that can make it even better: chocolate, of course. Chocolate can improve just about anything. If you've ever made a pecan pie before, and even if you haven't, you'll find no difficulty throwing this one together since the filling is the same simple mixture of corn syrup, sugar, eggs, and pecans with the addition of melted chocolate chips. Hardly any extra effort is involved, and yet what a delightful difference it makes!

Recipe: Chocolate Pecan Pie

S'mores are so sticky and messy that it's a good thing the dessert is typically eaten outdoors. The same chocolate-marshmallow-graham cracker flavor combination, however, translates very well into a pie that can be eaten neatly with a knife and fork. This recipe pays homage to the campfire favorite with a graham cracker crust, layers of marshmallow cream and chocolate pudding, and a topping made from toasted mini marshmallows and a broken-up chocolate bar.

Recipe: Ooey Gooey S'mores Pie

While not every pie is a quiche, every quiche is, in fact, a pie, so a quiche would make an appropriate entrée for a Pi Day dinner. This particular quiche is a pretty classic one made from spinach, gruyère cheese, and eggs. If you add a side salad (perhaps a spinach one), you can make a light meal out of it and still have plenty of room left over for sampling a smorgasbord of dessert pies.

Recipe: Classic Spinach Quiche

If you're not familiar with the banoffee pie, that's because it's more of a British thing that has yet to really catch on in the U.S. We're not quite sure why, because if you like super-sweet, creamy desserts, and you also like bananas, you're sure to swoon over the banana/toffee ("ban" + "offee") filling. This pie is quite easy to make, too – you start with a graham cracker crust, add a layer of caramel sauce followed by a layer of sliced bananas, then top the whole thing off with sweetened whipped cream and shaved chocolate. Stick it in the refrigerator for a few hours to firm up, then enjoy your banana bonanza.

Recipe: Best Banoffee Pie

This million-dollar pie may get its moniker from its super-rich flavor, but it's not exactly haute cuisine, nor is it expensive to make. In fact, it's made from the kind of groceries you can buy at any grocery store: a down-to-earth mixture of condensed milk, Cool Whip, coconut, crushed pineapple, pecans, and lemon juice, all stirred together and scooped into a graham cracker crust. While the pie will need a few hours of chilling time before it's ready to eat, it's perfect for Pi Day procrastinators as it can be thrown together in just five minutes.

Recipe: Easy Million Dollar Pie Recipe