Let's make one thing clear, I'm not a food or product photographer. But in honor of Pi day I thought I'd share my family's favorite pie recipe...with some photos of my kids "helping" make it. Amazingly we did not get any extra ingredients in the pie (ie: crayons, a purple glue stick, or a cup full of water). My littles are so helpful.
And before we begin, a while back I took a photo of Chase (my middle one) with the caption, "He's like Bruce Willis, at the end of any Bruce Willis movie." If you look closely you can see he's even got a little red scrape/goose egg on his forehead. I mean the level of dirt my kid could contain was ridiculous. Trying to keep him clean in public, for you know, social standards, was sometimes just a dream. He's grown, thankfully, out of it...some of it. Eva is growing into it, in her own creative way. But we'll come back to that.
So on to Pi(e) day! This is my French Silk Chocolate Pie, that I found in some church recipe book probably from the 80's. This is the easiest pie to make and also the easiest to mess up. First start out by making your pie crust--I have a friend that tells me this is easy. You know what else is easy? A frozen pie crust when you have three little helpers.
Bake that up and hope you take it out before it burns. While you're doing that grab a stick of UNsalted butter and let it soften--but not melty on the edges--heaven forbid that butter even gets slightly melted. Just start over. Then grab one of your more mature helpers to melt and stir some chocolate.
mmmmm chocolatey goodness. Now cream the butter and hope your helpers don't throw anything else in there. I highly suggest you make this pie with a stand mixer if available. You can skip your arm workout for the week if you mix this by hand.
Add some sugar...and mix the heck out of it. Go check your email, take a short shower, Snapchat some selfies. Seriously, mix the sugar for a solid 7-9 minutes. Now add your COOLED melted chocolate and some vanilla. Annnnnd mix some more.
Secretly I'm giving my helpers the side eye here. Now add an egg. ANNNNNND mix some more, at least 2 minutes. No Joke, hand mixing is a work out. But look how pretty it gets!
Now add another egg...and you guessed it, mix for another 2 minutes. Then of course, quality check time courtesy of your helpers. It might be a little grainy from the sugar--honestly it probably will be grainy, but it's still really good.
Dump that goodness into your cooled pie crust, and pop into the fridge to set for at least an hour.
Then clean up. I lucked out. Three kids, three utensils to lick. Gotta be fair.
So I know you're probably thinking...you don't cook it? with raw eggs? I know I how you feel, and trust me I've felt the same way. I was skeptical about this recipe for a loooong time. Or maybe eggs like this is a common thing in pies and I just don't know that much about cooking...? But so far in my 5 years of making it no one has ever got sick. If you're pregnant or bird flu is going around maybe skip this one, but I've never ever had a problem with it.
After refrigerating for a couple hours, plop on some whip topping and shave a little chocolate on top. Dive in. Have a coffee or glass of water nearby because this is ricccccch. My boys were being little turkeys and only eating the cool whip off the top at first, then the chocolate, and licked the crust clean.
But Eva on the other hand...had ideas for her slice of pie.
Nothing like Chicken noodle soup on chocolate pie. mmm mmm good. I let her play and try it, but when she started to wipe her hands on her hair, I had to call it.
Back to Bruce Willis; Eva was making her way up to Bruce level with the pie/soup mash up mess. Wait until it warms up and we're outside all day. Bruce level of dirty, I'll be ready for you.
Until next Pi Day, "yippee PI yay, mother***"
Please forgive the Die Hard reference, I couldn't help myself. The pie recipe is below. xo, L.
French Silk Chocolate Pie
- 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter (if you use margarine it turns into soup. learned that mistake)
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 squares bakers unsweetened or semi-sweet choc (2 oz total) melted & cooled
- 2 eggs
- pie crust baked & cooled (I use the regular size)
- 1 tub Cool Whip
Bake pie crust according to package directions. Cream butter in stand mixer until light and fluffy. Add sugar, 1/4 cup at a time & cream together, until light & fluffy. You can easily mix for 2-3 minutes after each 1/4 cup of sugar. Add cooled chocolate & vanilla and mix. Add eggs 1 at a time & beat at medium speed for at least 3 minutes after each addition. Pour into pie crust & refridgerate at least 1 hour. Top pie with cool whip (it takes less than an 8 oz tub) & chocolate curls just before serving. It turns out beautiful!
Just a side note, I literally turn off the mixer maybe twice to scrape the sides. Otherwise just keep mixing. Tastes amazing and some say it's even better the next day.