Chocolate Pie

This week I received my copy of The Homesick Texan Cookbook. If you haven't heard of Lisa Fain, she's a 7th-generation Texan who moved to New York and then desperately missed the cooking she grew up on in Texas. She began a blog only to find that there were many others like her out there. She ultimately wrote this fabulous cookbook (more to come on that in another post), and this recipe is straight from this book.

I love chocolate and I love pie, so when I saw Chocolate Pie, I knew nothing could be better on a Friday night. Both the crust and the pie are her recipes.

Grandma's Pie Crust (via the Homesick Texan)
Ingredients:
2 cups AP flour
1 tsp kosher salt (I reduced to 1/2 tsp)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup whole milk

1. In a bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Add to the dry ingredients the oil and milk, and stir until well combined. (If the dough is too dry, you can add a bit more milk, about a tsp at a time.) **I did have to add about 2 more tsp of milk.

2. Halve the dough into two balls. If you need only one crust, you can freeze the other crust for up to 6 months.

3. To line the pie pan, take one ball, place it between two sheets of wax paper, and roll it out into about an 11-inch circle. Life the top sheet of wax paper off the rolled-out dough into the pie pan, lifting off the other piece of wax paper. Press until smooth and trim the edges using a fork or your fingers to crimp for decoration.

Grandma's Chocolate Pie (via the Homesick Texan)
Ingredients:
1 unbaked Grandma's Pie Crust
3/4 cup sugar
5 tbs AP flour
1/4 tsp kosher salt
4 tbs unsweetened cocoa or 1.5 squares of unsweetened baking chocolate
2 egg yolks, beaten slightly
1.5 cups whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tbs unsalted butter

Meringue ingredients:
2 egg white
1/8 tsp kosher salt
4 tbs granulated sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Poke holes into the unbaked pie crust with a fork and bake it for 15-20 minutes or until it's lightly browned.

3. Meanwhile, mix together the sugar, flour, salt, cocoa, egg yolks and milk with a whisk. Cook in a pot on MEDIUM heat while occasionally stirring until it bubbles and thickens, about 7-10 minutes. If it starts to become lumpy, just beat out the lumps. (It will not get any thicker in the oven, so cook it in the pot until it's your desired thickness.)

4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and butter.

Getting ready to go in the oven!

5. To make meringue, beat the egg whites with the salt until they are smooth, light, and fluffy. They should have soft peaks like whipped cream. Stir the sugar into the meringue.

6. Pour the chocolate custard into the baked pie shell and top with the beaten egg white mixture. Bake it until the peaks on the meringue are lightly browned, about 10-15 minutes.