It's Pi Day!

...and in honor of this special, near and dear to my heart holiday (which also happens to be two days before my birthday!) I made a pie. French Silk Pie to be specific. Now, this is not your typical chocolate pie. For starters, there's no pudding involved. The filling is light and fluffy, and the flavor is rich and velvety, too sweet and far too airy for a graham cracker crust.

Having worked in a bakery that only made pies, I can throw together a pie crust or 50 in a snap. It's all about having the right ratios of fat, flour, and water- and once you know what consistency you're looking for you don't necessarily need a recipe. Basically, any old crust will do here, and I'll figure out save my recipe for another day, and a pie where the crust is more important. After all, strawberry rhubarb season is coming soon.

Laziness aside- the real star of the show here is the filling. It's sinful- it walks the line between being heavenly and just a little.... ok, a lot naughty. Every time you see a spoon pictured below, you can bet it was licked clean shortly thereafter. As a special bonus for those of you who like to walk on the wild side: it contains four raw eggs.


I've been eating cookie dough and brownie batter out of the bowl for the entire duration of my (almost) 23 years, and plenty of restaurants serve aioli and oozing poached eggs with no ill effects, so I chose not to worry about the small chance of salmonella poisoning here. I would not, however serve this pie to any small children, pregnant ladies, people with weak immune systems, or elderly folks. Now that the air is full of danger, and your momma told you not to (even though she's licking the spoon after she kicks you out of the kitchen), don't you want to make this even more?



The recipe is originally by Ree Drummond

French Silk Pie

4 ounces baking chocolate, unsweetened (though I used half semi-sweet because it's what I had)
1 cup of salted butter
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 whole eggs
1 pre baked pie shell.

1) Melt your chocolate in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time until you can stir it smooth. Set it aside and let it cool. Or, forget that you're supposed to be doing other preparatory things and take many photos of chocolate gratuitously dripping off of a spoon.

2) In the bowl of your stand mixer (you could use a hand mixer for this, but you won't want to) beat the butter and sugar with your whisk attachment till it's fluffy. Now drizzle that nice cool chocolate allllll over your fluffy butter mixture. Toss the vanilla in and whip whip whip.

3) Scrape the bowl! It's very important to be a vigilant bowl scraper here. Now- add your eggs. Do this one at a time. Beat after each egg addition. That's right, you heard me, each individual egg addition for at least five minutes. Do not roll your eyes at your computer screen and throw them all in there at once, because you will hate yourself for it later. You can do productive things during this time, like licking the spoon you scraped the bowl with, or baking that pie crust you forgot to make ahead of time. Shh.

4) SCRAPE THE BOWL! Now beat it real good for a few seconds just to make sure you got every last bit of goodness incorporated and spatula that filling into your prepared, cooled, pie shell. Smooth it out a little bit, and chill it in the fridge for at least two hours, more time if you got it.

5) Top each slice with a dollop of whipped cream, and go to town. I personally like to gussie up my whipped cream with just the barest sprinkle of flaky sea salt.


This post is slightly delayed because I was busy stuffing my face full of pie.