Pie love you so much!
If you follow dessert or pie accounts on Instagram, chances are you have seen one of Marie Saba's popular pastries come through your feed.
For Pi Day we got a glimpse into the Austin-based baker's kitchen and she shared the secret to her homemade all-butter crust beloved by her followers.
Saba told "GMA" she likes to add something "surprising or funny" to her pies to "make people laugh or smile."
Saba's adorable crusts range from intricate works of delicate dough art to clever puns and seasonally inspired sayings.
"I kept seeing cookies and cakes and thought, 'Well why don't we write on pies?'" Saba said of how she came up with the idea initially. "So I started making pies with funny phrases or movie quotes."
She also began to hand-paint her pie crusts "with a few drops of food coloring." From beautiful fall leaves to the Instagram logo, her pies grew in popularity and were reposted by Instagram and houseware brands.
The mom and cookbook author added some humor and pop culture to her list of ingredients.
"It's very tied to seasons and holidays -- I try to keep my pies relevant," she said.
On Thanksgiving Reese Witherspoon reposted Saba's "Glad I wore stretch pants" pie and it became an instant social media sensation.
The actress' company blog for Draper James even tapped Saba to create a pie for Pi Day, which has become synonymous with her signature dessert.
Saba learned how to make her mom's classic all-butter homemade crust at the age if 6 and she has added her own fun twists ever since.
Saba has taught pie crust classes around the country and said "there's nothing more satisfying than seeing people transform their own relationship to pie crust from something really difficult to something that's fun and easy."
Aside from her amazing artistic pies, "I like to also do inspirational ones. Everybody needs to see that every day," she said.
But when she's not baking for her followers, friends or family, she said her favorite dessert to eat is flan.
"I make a Mexican flan and switched it over to a pie crust," Saba said of the custard-filled pie. "I love anything that’s rich, creamy and custardy."
Marie's "It's easier than you think" pie crust recipe
Ingredients:
Makes one 9-inch pie crust
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter (very cold!), cut into eight slices
4-5 tablespoons ice cold water
Directions:
Place the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor. Pulse a few times to combine.
Add the butter. Pulse several times until butter and flour begin to combine. Stop when the mixture has the texture of cornmeal. (It will still look very dry; this is a good thing.)
Begin adding water, about four tablespoons to start. Pulse to combine. Add one more tablespoon water if needed; pulse again to combine.
The dough should still feel dry when you run your fingers through it, but should hold together in a ball when you squeeze it in your hand. (If the dough is too wet, it will be difficult to roll out, and you will have to use a lot of flour to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin and counter. Too much flour will make your crust taste bland.)
Spread a large piece of plastic wrap on the counter (approximately one to two feet long). Gently dump the dough (it will still be a little crumbly) on to plastic wrap.
Pull together the plastic wrap and mold it around the dough so the dough forms a ball inside the wrap.
Place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
When you are ready to roll out the crust, remove dough from the refrigerator, unwrap and let sit at room temperature for about 5 minutes.
Flatten the ball of dough slightly so it will be easier to roll out. Flour your surface ans using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a circular shape that has about the same thickness all the way around until the circle is evenly rolled out.
