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Baking A 600 Pound 7-Foot Pie For The Nappanee Apple Festival

Baking a giant pie for the apple festival has been a tradition since 1976 (photo courtesy of Nappanee Apple Festival on Facebook)

The Nappanee Apple Festival is one weekend a year where the small city in Indiana goes big. Just last year, the city of 6,500 on any normal day ballooned into a mass of over 110,000.

In its 43rd year, the festival is a far cry from its humble beginnings as a one-day celebration in a parking lot, now taking over an entire town for a whole weekend.

"Like most things when you're a child, you really don't appreciate what's going on until you become an adult. As a kid, it was just that really fun thing that happened every year," said Nicole Beer, who handles the festival's corporate sponsorships and social media.

Beer's grandparents were tasked with launching the Nappanee Apple Festival back when the city was looking to replace its onion festival (presumably due to the lack of dessert options). Over the years, she said, the changes to the event were slow but impactful.

"[Back then] you knew that you could get an elephant ear that weekend, and you could get an apple dumpling, and there were maybe going to be some trivial games for kids," Beer said. "Over the years it grew little by little. And there isn't any one year when you can look back in the history and go, ‘That was the year.'"

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The 7ft pie goes in the oven!

Posted by Nappanee Apple Festival on Thursday, September 14, 2017

Friday, when all is crisped and cooled, the pie will feed about 1,100 people. That may sound like a lot, but Beer said the pieces only last until Saturday afternoon before they're sold out.

Baking a pie that large sounds impossible, but Hartman and her team prove it can be done. Eating a pie that large? That would probably kill you. But it didn't stop my curiosity from figuring out what that would look like.

Scaled up from Nutritionix's measurements of a basic apple pie and rounded to the nearest whole number, the nutrition facts of the 7-foot apple pie are:

Calories: 206,276

Total Fat: 9,756 g (14,983% Daily Value)

Saturated Fat: 3,275 g (16,377%)

Sodium: 174,917 mg (7,317%)

Total Carbohydrates: 29,966 g (10,018%)

Fiber: 1,394 g (5,575%)

Sugars: 13,938 g

Of course, if just one 1,100th of that seems more palatable, you can taste the massive pie yourself at the Nappanee Apple Festival this weekend. It begins Thursday evening and goes until Sunday night.

For more information on the festival and the full lineup of events, you can check out their website. For a place to buy a 7-foot pie pan, I'm afraid I can't help you out.

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This story, by Payton Knobeloch originally appeared on Digital 1229.

For information on Apple Pie Science, check out WFIU's A Moment of Science.

If you're inspired to make a scaled down version, check out Kayte's Apple Pie Recipe.

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