Saturday was the Mr’s birthday! He had a great birthday with gifts from the kids and me. It’s tax season, so he had to work (boo) but only half a day (yay!). My goal was to do something very special for him for his birthday:
recreate his Grandmother’s chocolate pie.
To recreate his late Grandmother’s chocolate pie, made every year for him for as long as he can remember, is no small feat. I felt pretty much doomed from the start. For the record, I’ve never made a pie before. Did you see that?
I have never made a pie before.
So I found two recipes: Taste of Home Grandma’s Chocolate Meringue Pie and Homesick Texan Grandma’s Chocolate Pie. I am pretty pleased at how the pies got started:
Now, it’s not like I made the pie crust (refrigerated!) but I did flute the edge (YAY!). Let’s save that for next month. I followed directions to poke holes in the crust so it didn’t bubble up but it didn’t quite work out:
Now, I wasn’t going to let this deter me. No one is going to see this part of the crust anyway, right? Right. So fillings were made and then I needed to make the meringue. I was nerdy proud of myself that I was able to do this by hand:
So pretty–I was sure I was on a roll:
And then it happened: leakage.
The second one came out beautifully! Can you see the heart?
And then, THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT:
The Mr. said not to worry about the leakage and he tried the Taste of Home pie and declared it to be 80% right! That was a fantastic grade in my opinion. Then he requested a spaghetti dinner and I asked him to taste the other pie too, even though he was full. He really didn’t want to, but he begrudingly took a bite of the Homesick Texan pie. His face LIT UP and he declared it to be 98% his Grandmother’s pie. I wanted to cry. He ate a whole other piece of the good pie and nearly made himself sick. In a good way, of course.
I think I’ve solved the leakage problem–neither of the recipes said to cool the pie before putting the meringue on. I sealed them well, but I don’t know anything about anything, least of all pie things, so I didn’t know better. Science tells me that if you put something cold on something hot, the cold thing will melt, but I followed the recipes to the letter. Next time, I’ll let them cool before meringue-ing them.
Also, because I was afraid that all the pies were going to taste akin to a mud pie, I made a chocolate cake, too:
Overall, I’m happy with the results even though there is room for improvement. I can’t wait to try it again!
