A Visit from Peggy's Kitchen

Slept in this morning for which I blame the 0-dark-30 thunder showers. Thunder showers in February! Who says there aren't some benefits from climate change? Thank you, Lord!

As I write this it is the mid-morning of Fat Tuesday. According to American tradition Fat Tuesday will be followed by Wide-Load Wednesday, Thunder-Thighs Thursday and Flabulous Friday. So in honor of the day--and of having arrived late to work--I am featuring a repost from my good friend and fellow blogger Peggy Browning....

Fat Tuesday Chocolate Cream Pie…Life After 50

Posted on February 12, 2013 on fiftyodd.com

Fat Tuesday Chocolate Cream Pie

Fat Tuesday today…

Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent tomorrow…

These are two significant days on the Christian calendar to me. Today, being Fat Tuesday and all, is the perfect day to make a chocolate cream pie. It’s a great day to bake one and share it with someone you love.

I’m not a great cook although I have my moments. But my mother was a great cook and I, well…I’m her daughter…and I recognize good cooking when I taste it.

My mother, in addition to milking the cow and raising all our food and sewing our clothes, baked something sweet every day. Yes. You read that correctly. EVERY DAY. Unless there was something sweet left over from the previous day and there was enough of it for all of us. In that case she didn’t. But we usually ate it all, so she proceeded to bake. Every Day.

You see, my Daddy loved sweets, especially pies. And my Mama loved my Daddy. She expressed her love Every Day by baking him a pie.

Occasionally Mama made a cake, but that was rare. Most of the time she baked pies: cream pies, fruit pies, fried pies, cobblers. She made her own pie crusts too.

So, last week when I was craving something sweet, I looked in my cupboard to satisfy that craving. But my cupboard was bare…no store-bought cookies, no Little Debbie snack cakes, not even a cracker fortified with high fructose corn syrup.

But still…there had to be something there. I needed something, something sweet. And so, I reasoned, did my youngest grandchild.

I used my imagination, dug out the family cookbook that my sister compiled for us a few years ago, and decided to make a pie. Yum.

My mother’s recipe is for coconut cream pie, but basically any cream pie has the same foundation. As long as you get the cream part down, you can make any kind of pie you want: banana, pineapple (use only canned pineapple), chocolate. I had nothing but the basic ingredients and some cocoa. Therefore…chocolate cream pie it would be!

Although I didn’t have the instructions for how much cocoa to use, I improvised and just added cocoa until I thought it looked right. Life is just one big experiment, after all. Right?

Chocolate Cream Pie

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons corn starch

3 egg yolks

2 cups milk (I used 1 ½ cups of 2 % milk and added a ½ cup of cream)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

¼ cup cocoa

Meringue

3 egg whites

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Baked Pie Crust ( I did use a store bought crust because I had it in the refrigerator already). I suggest Pillsbury…

 For the pie filling:

• Slowly heat 1 ½ cups of milk in a 1 ½ or 2 quart sauce pan. Do NOT let it boil.
• Mix sugar, corn starch and cocoa  in a bowl. Set aside.
• In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks well then add ½ cup cold milk. Stir together.
• Add dry ingredients to egg & milk. Mix well. (Should make a nice smooth concoction, like a smoothie)
• Now add the mixture to the hot milk, stirring constantly until it is the consistency of pudding.
• Pour into the baked pie crust.

• For the meringue topping:

  • Add cream of tartar to egg whites. Beat egg whites until very stiff. Add sugar and vanilla, beat until sugar is dissolved.
  • (If you don’t have cream of tartar, that’s OK. My mother never used it and her meringue was excellent…In fact I prefer not to use cream of tartar because I like the meringue better without it.)
  • Spread egg whites on pie and brown in 350 degree oven…10 minutes maybe…possibly more…depends on how brown you like your meringue. It doesn’t take long, so don’t walk out of the kitchen and forget you’ve got something in the oven! (Don’t laugh. It happens.)
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  I’ve made lots of cream pies in my lifetime, but none recently…like in the last 10 years or so. (I blame Weight Watchers for that.) And chocolate cream pie? Never. This was my first.
  I swear…this pie was so good it made me cry. And it made me miss my Mama. When I fed a few bites of chocolate cream pie to my granddaughter, I could feel my mother close by, smiling at us. I know my grand-baby felt the love there, just as I did.
  There’s no better way for a proper Southern woman to express her undying love for someone than to bake them a  pie. You need to bake one today…and maybe Every Day
  Enjoy Fat Tuesday and eat some chocolate cream pie!