last weekend i was going to attend a “wine/chocolate/board game/stay up late talking” party. before the party was planned, i had decided i would try to make Brandi’s MawMaw’s Chocolate Pie at some point over the weekend. it seemed easy enough, and i like chocolate. so now, not only was i going to make my first dessert from scratch (unless baking a cake from a mix counts as ‘from scratch’, and i don’t think it does), now i was bringing it for a party. i thought if the pie sucked, we’d just drink more wine.

first we start with the ingredients. notice, i went with the pure vanilla extract, not the imitation. my mom always had a bottle of the McCormick, so that was familiar. i bought a graham cracker crust because i could not find the Pillsbury pie crust in the pie/cake aisle (i know now it’s near the biscuits). i don’t have a pie tin anyway, so buying just the crust would not have worked out so well.

pie ingredients

i went about combining the cocoa, sugar, and flour in the pot in preparation for the rest of the ingredients. if for some reason you get cocoa on your finger as your measuring and adding, do NOT lick it off. cocoa powder does not taste good…at all. in fact, you may end up like Tom Hanks in Big where he tried the caviar at the big company party.

first batch of ingredients

and also, when you open the box of sugar, there’s no bag like a box of cereal, the sugar is just in there. so after i opened the box at the top, i realized i would have to tape the top of the box back, opening it the proper way with a notch in the side later.

sugar box top

once the mixture was set, i went about adding the 2nd set of ingredients. in order to use JUST the egg yolks, i thought a fork would do the trick. i was wrong. unfortunately this egg yolk sacrificed it’s life for the sake of the pie. i was not going to let it down. i pressed onward. i used a big spoon for the remaining yolks and it worked.

goodbye egg yolk

2nd batch of ingredients

the mixture didn’t seem to thicken until ALL OF A SUDDEN which meant to pour it into the pie crust. the pouring went well.

cooling pie

i topped with cool whip lite and brought it to the party. it was not completely devoured because we also had cake and brownies, so no dessert could have been considered ‘The Best’, but the pie did draw compliments by those who ate it, and i don’t think it was the wine talking. SUCCESS!

final piece

(thanks Brandi!)