Easy Chocolate Pie (there's no Jello Pudding involved, so don't even go there, okay?)

Time for a photo redo. So many of my early recipes come with ugly pictures. Which is a shame because this isn't an ugly pie. It's a beautiful, delicious, and dumb easy pie. And now you can see it for yourself instead of blindly trusting me. 

And just for old time's sake, here's the original picture. Hmm, let's make it smaller--the glare from the flash is blinding me. 

We like chocolate in our house. Has that fact been mentioned? Last year I made a great chocolate pie from my America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. It was good, don't get me wrong. It was very good. But it was fussy. And for some reason the butter separated slightly and so we had just a bit of an oily film on top of the pie. And so I decided to return to my old faithful, really easy, and (don't tell Christopher Kimball) just as good chocolate pie. It's maybe even a little bit better since no sweat, blood, or tears are dripped into the recipe. My recipe came off of the back of some Nestle dark chocolate chips. Maybe Nestle doesn't sell the chips anymore. Or maybe they're trying to promote their baking bars now. Whatever the case, I was going to link you to them and give them all the credit and all, but they don't have the recipe up anymore. All they've got is one with 4 ounces less chocolate, and I assure you we don't want that. Also, I always use Ghiradelli chips. (So take that, Nestle--promote whatever lame-o 8-ounce bars you want, but I'm not going to.)

Dark Chocolate Satin Pie
Serves 8

1 graham cracker crust (I'll post my favorite below)
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
2 egg yolks (save the whites and make macaroons)
11-12 oz (about 2 C) dark chocolate (I use Ghiradelli 60%)

Whisk milk and egg yolks in a sauce pan. Heat until thickens slightly. Do not boil. Take off heat. Add chocolate chips. Pour into crust and chill 3 hours. Garnish with whipped cream. (I'll be putting up a whipped cream recipe later tonight. Use it. It will transform your Thanksgiving and possibly your life forever.)

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Graham Cracker Crust 

Adapted from allrecipes

10 graham cracker
1/3 C white sugar
5 Tbsp butter, melted
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional, if you like a little cinnamon with your chocolate, you Mexican hot chocolate lovers, you)

Put graham crackers in a blender and blend till they're crumbs. (I know it dirties an extra dish, but it's so so much easier. It'll save you a good 10 minutes. 20 if you're me.) If you don't have a blender or are a sicko and love crushing graham crackers, put them in a gallon Ziploc bag and rolling pin them or let your kids stomp on them or whatever.

Put crumbs in your pie crust. Add sugar and butter and mix. Spread in pan and press into a pie crust with your fingertips.

If, by chance, you don't like graham cracker crusts, or you don't have graham crackers and wild horses can't drag you back to the store right now, here's a great traditional pie crust recipe as well.

Standard Pie Crust

Makes 2 crusts (so use the other for your pumpkin pie or freeze it for another time)


2 1/2 C flour
1 C butter, cold
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4-1/2 C cold water

Process flour, sugar, and butter in food processor or blender until the butter is in pea-sized chunks (my chunks are always a little smaller). (Or cut the butter in with a pastry cutter if you feel the same way about cutting in butter as I do about kneading bread.)

Add water by the tablespoon till the dough comes together. Knead the dough a few times if necessary, but try not to handle it too much with your hands because that warms the butter and that means less flakiness (if flakiness matters to you in your crusts).

Roll out the dough. The internet says that a nice, easy, neat way to do this is to roll it between 2 pieces of waxed paper or parchment paper. Then the transfer is easy. Take off one layer of waxed paper and put your crust in the pan. Then take off the other layer and crimp your edges or whatever edge fanciness suits you. I tried this with 2 pieces of wax paper and it just scooted around annoyingly and wouldn't really roll out. I took off one layer and it still scooted around, but I got it to roll and it really did make the transferring way easier, but do flour your wax paper.