Pamela and her friend Nicole are each baking apple pies and tarts for a bake sale, using the same recipes. Pamela baked 5 apple pies and 7 apple tarts, using a total of 68 apples. Nicole made 5 apple pies and 9 apple tarts, which used 76 apples. How many apples does each dessert require?

Each apple pie requires 8 apples, and each apple tart requires 4 apples.

Step-by-step explanation:

We see that both Pamela and Nicole bake the same amount of apple pies, but different amounts of apple tarts. Because of this, we can subtract the two to try to figure out the amount of apples for each apple tart. We subtract 68 from 76, giving us 8. Nicole baked 9 apple tarts, while Pamela baked 7, and 9-7=2. So we can bake two apple tarts with 8 apples, so one apple tart requires 4 apples (we divide by 2). Now that we know the amount of apples per each apple tart, we multiply 7 apple tarts that Pamela made by 4 apples, giving us 28. We subtract that from the total amount of apples Pamela used, which was 68, giving us 40. From this we can deduct that 5 apple pies need 40 apples, and we divide by 5, giving us 1 apple pie requires 8 apples.