After Christmas, we fell into a very relaxed state of life and we almost forgot about the fact that we needed one more pie on Sunday! Kate wasted no time in stating that she wanted a chocolate lava pie, with a gooey chocolate middle. So we found one.
Behold, the final pie of the Pie Project!
The task of making the pie fell to Shelly and Matt (though Kate helped a little). Matt made the basic standard butter-and-butter-flavored-shortening crust we’ve decided is our new go-to. Shelly did the filling, which was basically melted chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar, and a bit of flour and salt (which added a nice kick). We ate it while it was still warm from the oven, with some absolutely necessary vanilla ice cream. Kate, the stinker, didn’t finish her piece, but the rest of us agreed it was great. It reminded us a lot of Kate’s Chocolate Fudge Pie from earlier this year, but this was definitely lava-ier. The leftovers might last us till 2020.
The middle was basically chocolate goop, and could not be eaten without vanilla ice cream.
This whole Pie Project really had its genesis last Thanksgiving. We made a bunch of pies throughout the month of November 2018 and that led to the decision that we needed to own more pie plates, and that led to the Pie Project as a way to put them to good use. A year later, after establishing pie as our be-all-end-all for the year, we knew we had to do something epic for Thanksgiving. We decided the way to go would be to have six pies, bringing our total for the year up to 66 pies. Each family member could choose one pie. It could be a repeat of a pie we’ve already had this year, or it could be a new one. As it turned out, we had two repeats and four new ones. In no particular order:
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “Ice Cream” Pie
Even lovelier than the one from June
Leah’s choice was the re-creation of the pie which prompted a friend to say “This is the best pie I’ve ever had in my life!” There is no actual ice cream in this pie, but it’s a frozen mixture of cream cheese, Cool Whip, cookie dough balls, and chocolate chips in an Oreo crust. It was one of the more popular pies of Thanksgiving, especially among the younger set.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
There is light-colored peanut butter hiding under that lovely chocolate ganache, promise.
Annie’s choice was the traditional chocolate peanut butter pie we have had every Thanksgiving for many years, but hadn’t included in the Pie Project till now. It’s essentially a buckeye candy in pie form: a powdered sugar/butter/peanut butter mixture for the filling, a chocolate ganache topping, and an Oreo crust. This was the first pie to be all gone – the kids went crazy on it on Black Friday afternoon.
Apple Pie
The prettiest pie of the year? Yup.
Someone had to make sure that there was an apple pie at Thanksgiving, so Ellie and Matt kind of combined forces. Technically, this was Matt’s choice, but Ellie accepted his suggestion for her choice. This is the traditional apple pie we’ve been making for a few years now, but with a new crust that we’ve discovered during the Pie Project, made with both butter and butter-flavored shortening. In order to make it special, Matt made the top a couple of days in advance and spent quite a long time on it. It’s hard to braid pie dough, but check that out. Breakfast the next day was awesome.
Cranberry Gingersnap Pie
The sprig of green came straight from our backyard. The sugared cranberries look great too.
What’s Thanksgiving without cranberries? But no one likes the cranberry sauce that keeps the shape of the can. This pie, suggested by Matt but technically chosen by Ellie, was the talk of Thanksgiving. We all expected it to be good (well, those of us willing to eat non-chocolate pies), but it exceeded all of our expectations. The filling is a cranberry curd made by boiling down fresh cranberries with water and sugar, and then mixing with egg yolks and lemon juice. The filling was tart and sweet and smooth and an incredible color. The crust was made from crushed gingersnap cookies (specifically Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger cookies) and a bit of walnuts. It was sharp and spicy and just the perfect compliment to the filling. Never before has a pie had such strong and distinctive flavors competing between the filling and the crust. I’m not sure we can ever have Thanksgiving without this pie again.
Chocolate Ganache Pie
This pie, chosen by Kate, has been a favorite of the family for Thanksgiving for some time. The filling is two different kinds of chocolate, heavy cream, and eggs. The crust is a chocolate pie crust (basically regular pie crust but with cocoa). Then it’s all topped off by whipped cream and chocolate shavings. It is heavy and rich and you can’t eat a very big slice – or even a very big bite – without gasping for milk. It’s a chocolate lover’s dream.
Atlantic Beach Pie
It looks like the crust reaches higher than the filling, but that’s just more room for whipped cream.
Finally, Shelly chose an Atlantic Beach Pie, which was one of the pies we chose for Thanksgiving last year that inspired us to look for more unusual pies, and led to the pie project. One of the first Pie Project pies in January was a lime version, but the traditional lemon version is better. It’s just about the perfect lemon pie. The filling is essentially the same as a key lime pie, except lemon: lemon juice, sweetened condensed milk, and egg yolks. The crust is saltine crackers, sugar, and butter. We crushed too many crackers and were eating the sweet, buttery, crunchy mixture for a couple of days afterwards. The salty crust is the perfect complement to the sweet, velvety, lemony filling.
Black Friday Pie Party
As has been our tradition for several years now, we once again hosted a Black Friday Pie Party: Bring your leftover pie to share. We had a good crowd show up this year, and we got a lot of good pie out of it. Some of the memorable pies to make an appearance (which don’t count toward the Pie Project because they were made by other families): berry pie, chocolate cheesecake, pecan pumpkin pie, and Costco pumpkin pie (which somehow we ended up keeping nearly the whole pie), sour cream cheesecake, and many more. It was a tasty evening of awesomeness.
It’s not that Kate isn’t creative – it’s just that she knows what she likes. Another iteration of chocolate fudge, this week it was Brownie Pie. This pie featured a chocolate pie dough that we got from a neighbor some time ago, but haven’t ever used in the Pie Project. It’s got most of the main ingredients of pie dough plus chocolate, and it comes out kind of like a solid chocolate cookie. It’s great.
You can see the shine of the goopy middle.
Inside this great shell was something that was more akin to warm half-baked brownie batter than it was an actual brownie. That is to say, it was incredible. We made 1.5x the filling of this recipe (to fit our large pie pan), which meant we baked it a little longer, and we left out the walnuts. We served it warm, and it was goopy and smooth and fudgy and all of us were reaching for the vanilla ice cream and milk. One does not simply eat a slice of Kate’s Brownie Pie without a glass of milk handy. It was very similar to the Chocolate Fudge Pie she made in the spring, but that was one of the universally acknowledged best pies of the year, so apparently this one was too.
Last week there was this whole controversy over whether or
not cheesecake is pie. (That’s silly; of
course it is.) This week, however, the
question is: If it doesn’t have a crust, can it be pie? Since it’s now October, Kate, who has been
planning her Halloween costume for weeks, decided she wanted a Halloween candy
pie. She didn’t seem to care that it
would be a lot easier to do a Halloween candy pie after Halloween, when we have
all the candy. We considered a few possibilities,
including just throwing a bunch of candy into a pie shell and baking/melting it
all together.
Ultimately, she settled on a Halloween candy cookie pie, which basically consisted of making a bunch of chocolate chip cookie dough and throwing all the candy into it, and then baking it in a pie pan. There was no crust – it was just a big cookie with crazy mix-ins, with some chocolate frosting dollops around the edge. And Kate showed no discrimination in what she threw in. M&Ms are practically normal. Reese’s peanut butter cups make sense. Kit Kats would be fine. But she also put in Skittles, Nerds, and Starbursts. It tasted just like you would expect a large cookie with Reese’s, Nerds, and Skittles to taste. Some of us liked it, others didn’t care for it at all. But it’s not entirely certain that it was pie.
Kate kind of got short-changed. For her pie week, we were on vacation in Florida. We had a full kitchen, but we didn’t have the tools or ingredients to make a pie, so we went to the local Wal-Mart and told her to pick a pie from the freezer section. She picked a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup pie. We thawed it and served it and though admittedly it might have been a bit smaller than a normal pie from home, it was probably gone faster than any pie we’ve had all year.
What’s the most exciting thing in this picture: the pie, the girl, or the artwork in our rental condo?
A few weeks ago, Leah tried a cookie dough pie, but this time Kate wanted to go all-out with the cookie dough. Instead of a bunch of cookie dough balls in a creamy filling, Kate’s cookie dough pie was basically one big disc of cookie dough. With a chocolate ganache topping. We used the rest of the chocolate graham crackers for the crust, but didn’t have quite as many of them as we needed, so we used a few regular graham crackers mixed in. It actually gave the crust a salt-and-pepper look that went very well with the dark-and-light brown of the cookie dough, and it tasted great. The pie was very sweet, but it was enjoyed by all.
By a happy coincidence, Kate got to pick the pie the day after her birthday. She said she wanted a “vanilla pie,” but what that turned out to be when you pressed her on it was vanilla pudding and chocolate pudding in a pie shell. We used our butter crust and put some Cool Whip and mini chocolate chips on top. It tasted like a bunch of pudding in a pie shell, so for those members of the family who think that’s a pretty great dessert, this was a pretty great pie.
For the main pie for Easter, Kate chose a recipe Shelly found online. The main feature was a rice krispie crust, with a chocolate pudding filling, and various Easter candies on top. It was so good. Shelly was impressed that she was able to make the chocolate pudding on the stovetop, and it came out perfectly. Our crust was a little hard, possibly because we had to chill the pie in the fridge to get the pudding to set up, or possibly because we used some old marshmallows (or not enough marshmallows). Everyone loved the Easter pie!
It’s not clear where Kate got the idea for unicorn pie. We might have suggested it to her. We found a recipe online, featuring a graham cracker-sprinkle crust and a white chocolate ganache-cream cheese filling, and Kate had to try it. There was a lot of anticipation for this one. Shelly and Kate made the crust the day before. Matt secretly made a marshmallow fondant unicorn horn for the middle of the pie, which was whipped out right before serving.
The unicorn pie was the best looking pie we’ve made yet this year, and honestly, it was one of the most universally enjoyed from a taste perspective. The filling was chocolatey and tangy but light, just how you would expect in a unicorn pie. Kate hits a home run again.
Kate was up this week. In preparation for this week, Shelly started asking Kate what kind of pie she wanted to make. She kept saying chocolate, but Shelly kept pestering her to specify what kind of chocolate pie she wanted. She finally announced that she wanted to make a “chocolate fudge pie.” Shelly said “I don’t have a recipe for chocolate fudge pie.” Kate rolled her eyes and said, “Look on your phone, Mom.” So Shelly googled those exact words on her phone and showed Kate all of the pictures of chocolate fudge pies that came up in the search. Kate picked her favorite looking one and that’s the one we made.
This pie is easily the best new pie we’ve had so far (writing this in March). Everyone loved it. It tastes like a lava cake in pie form – super rich, moist and very yummy. We served it warm with vanilla bean ice cream. Perfection!
Notes: We didn’t have enough shortening to make our regular pie crust, so we used this butter-based pie crust instead. It was really yummy.
Chocolate gooey deliciousness. Unicorn horn is just an added bonus.
The Pie Project 