Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

Today was such a good day of teaching and I have such a good recipe to share!

Math today was all about inverse trig functions and reciprocal trig functions.  To ensure that every student had a sketch of the graphs of these functions, we did various jigsaw activities.  This was great because students were able to investigate one inverse trig function and one reciprocal trig function in depth.  That is, they worked in new groups to graph these functions without calculators.  They had to analyze domain and range for each and use the original trig function to help them to graph the new functions.  After their in depth analysis, they returned to their original teams and shared their findings while also learning about their team-mates findings.  Every student ended up with a sketch of all six graphs.  This way, they all had the information and the process, but did not need to repeat the process over an over.  This would have been tedious and unsupportive of the learning goals.  Instead, the majority of the time was spent investigating what these functions are, what they represent, and how we can use them.  We learned a ton of information and it was really great to see the students up and moving around.  Plus, we had time for a nice game of Flinch as a small break in the middle of class.  I felt really great about today!

Now, it was Pi Day last week and I brought in FOUR Chocolate Chip Cookie Pies since I was helping host FOUR Pi Day celebrations.  This meant that I needed a recipe that was not complicated and would not take a ton of time to make.  I found the perfect one.  This Cookie Pie, adapted from Nestle Tollhouse, was simply amazing.  I bought pie crust, multiplied the recipe by 4, and put all the pies in at once.  I spent 15 minutes making the filling and then had 60 minutes to plan for school and clean up while the pies baked.  There you go, simple and delicious.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie
for one pie

Ingredients:
1 9-inch pie crust
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or 2 cups of whatever mix-ins you want)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 and place your unbaked pie crust in a pie pan.
2. Beat eggs until pale yellow.  Beat in both sugars until well combined.  Beat in flour, cinnamon, and vanilla.  Beat in the butter until well combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.
3.  Pour filling into the pie crust and bake for 55-60 minutes.  Pie will be lightly browned.  Let cool for at least 20 minutes.

Enjoy :)