Apple Pie for How Many People?!

Every year, we have a Valentine's Banquet on the Sunday closest to Valentine's Day.  This is done in appreciation of our church adults and as a fundraiser for our youth.  Needless to say, this takes a lot of preparation.  I carefully pick out the menu so we can have a nice meal without spending an incredible amount of money.  I usually delegate out a large part of the cooking; but reserve the dessert for myself to make.  This year I decided to make Caramel Apple Pie.

Making apple pie in and of itself does not need to be difficult.  I, however, have the gift of making even the smallest of tasks as difficult as they can possibly be.  In my head, it wouldn't be good enough to use canned  apple pie filling, or ready made crust.  It's not really that much harder to make your own crust, right? And it doesn't take THAT much time to make your own filling, right?

The first part of the task was figuring out the most efficient way to make enough pie for 60+ people.  I finally resigned myself to the fact that making it in pie pans was just not going to happen this time, so I made it in the convection oven size baking pans.  I called my mom, who confidently figured out I would need approximately 6 recipes per pan.  Yet, the physicist came out in me and I had to mathematically figure out exactly the area and volume of a pie pan and the same for the baking pans being used  - to which I discovered it would take 6.3 recipes to fill.  Yeah, I'll try to remember just to take my mom's word for it in the future.

I assembled all of my ingredients, and, true to my weird, organized nature I lined all of my ingredients and necessary tools up on the counter. I had enlisted two teenage girls to help me.  I can't praise God enough for convicting the heart of one of their mothers to come help also because, I found out that one girl didn't know how to peel an apple (and we had 36 to peel), and the other had to be late because she was working on a scholarship app.  So, today was a teaching experience! Here's a picture of my apples all lined up!

I'll spare you the details of the pie making itself, but if you're feeling ambitious here's what I used to make this much apple pie:
36 Apples (I mix the varieties between Braeburn, Pink Ladies, Fuji and, Granny Smith)
1 convection size baking pan and 1, 12x16 pan (this will make more than 60 servings, but I always plan for a few extra)
3 1/2 recipes of pie crust
3 C. Sugar
18 tsp. cinnamon
approx. 1 tsp salt
18 tbsp flour
I use a crumble topping, you could do whatever you want though.
My topping:
4 3/4 C. Brown Sugar
3 1/2 C. Butter
3 1/2 C. Oats
3 1/2 C. Flour
(mix with pastry blender or fork)
Bake @ 350 F for 30 min in a convection oven - I had to cover with foil have way through to prevent over browning.
I'm serving mine with caramel sauce and ice cream - If you'll the pie on top of the convection oven while you're cooking other things, it will warm up again so you can serve it hot!

The whole thing only took 2 1/2 hours, as long as all 3 (and eventually 4) of us worked hard the entire time.  I'm hoping it's worth it!