Marilyn Paige adores apple pie, but she knows her limitations.

"I can eat it, I just can't bake it," says Paige, a student/scrapbooker/photographer. "And I don't believe you can buy a great slice of apple pie in Philadelphia without paying a fortune."

Three years ago Paige abandoned her search for the ultimate apple pie and instead arranged for great apple pies to come to her.

Paige, who lives in a dollhouse of a home on a tiny South Philadelphia street, invited her friends, and their friends, to an Apple Pie Party.

Guests were asked to bring home-made or even (gasp!) store-bought apple pies. The winner would get a $50 gift card and the runner-up, a $25 card. (Paige springs for the prizes in exchange for all the pie she can eat.)

It was so successful that Paige held her third annual apple pie party in October. You'll learn about the winners later in this story. Meanwhile, sit back and salivate.

Guests drove in the rain from as far as Baltimore, laying 18 luscious pies at Paige's feet.

There were apple-cranberry, apple-walnut, and apple-brandy pies; pies with homemade crusts enriched with cream cheese, buttermilk powder, and even tapioca; pies with frozen crusts by Pillsbury and Marie Callender; pies with top crusts that were puffy, cross-hatched or crumbly; and fillings made with McIntoshes, Winesaps, Golden Delicious, Gala and Pink Ladies.

There were pints of ice cream for the á la mode portion of the evening and tins of real whipped cream for anyone feeling bereft of caloric opportunities.

With apologies to Sara Lee, nobody doesn't like apple pie. We associate mom with apple pie. In High Hopes, Frank Sinatra sang of "high in the sky, apple pie, hopes." And there are even three apple-pie-lovers groups on facebook.com

If everyone at Paige's party was telling the truth, I was the only person there who ever lied about making a homemade apple pie.

(It was a lie of omission, if you must know. I bought a frozen Sara Lee, baked it at home, and brought it to a family gathering. When other guests marveled at my apple pie, I simply smiled and said, "Thanks.")

Is that so awful?

Plenty of people at Paige's party admitted to frozen crust.

Megan Collier of Norristown used Pillsbury roll-out dough. It was her first ever attempt at pie-making, and for the filling she used a recipe her mother took from a 1974 McCalls cookbook. Mom supervised the effort, Collier said, so, thanks, Mom!

Another first-time baker, Don Cope of East Falls, also called his mother for advice. She's 91.

"My mom is from Pennsylvania Dutch stock, so I thought maybe pie-making is in the genes."

When dear old mom said, "Oh, just buy the crust," Cope opted to buy a Marie Callender brand and made nice cross-hatches in the top of his own design. For filling, he used an online recipe with cognac. It was yummy, but, unfortunately, he couldn't recall the site.

Maun Flanagan of Levittown had better luck with her mother.

"She didn't bake that often, but at Thanksgiving she made pumpkin and apple pies," said Flanagan, who brought her mother's apple pie and admitted to be only slightly surprised to learn her mother, Janet, 73, got the pie filling recipe from the back of a box of Minute Tapioca (see accompanying recipe).