I was reading Anadamo’s post about pie. My Pi post inspired her to try an apple pie. Yeah! Anadamo – your pie sounded great. Congrats on a successful pie from scratch.

I missed making a pie on Pi Day but I thought – what the heck – and decided to make one today. I remembered I had a frozen prebaked small pie dough shell that I made a while back in the freezer. I needed to use it up. That limited my choices to a pie that could use a prebaked shell. Hmmm… cream pie would be good. I asked G and of course he said – chocolate.

Last time I made a chocolate cream pie, I used a recipe that I had been making since high school. It was little bit grainy since it was thickened by flour. I wanted something a bit silkier today. I have another recipe that makes a great banana cream pie. It uses a combination of cornstarch and flour to thicken the filling. That would be better. Much more like a French pastry cream.

I decided to cut it by 1/3 since I had a small pie shell. Eck! I had to use math to figure out how to divide 2 1/2 tbs by 1/3. l ended up taking everything back to teaspoons in order to divide it by 1/3.

Oh but it was soooo good. I had some great bittersweet chocolate left over from the chocolate cake I made a Christmas. I added a bit of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips. It wasn’t dark enough so I added a bit of unsweetened chocolate. It really makes a difference to use great chocolate. If you are looking for some great baking chocolate – check out The Chocolate Man website. For bittersweet – Maricaibo by Fechlin is awesome. For unsweetened – Caraque by Cocoa Berry is so good. No bitter taste even though it is unsweetened.

We scarfed down half the pie tonight. I suspect I won’t be able to sleep with a bit of caffeine from the chocolate. Oh well, it was so good.

Here is a recipe for the cream pie. You can use it as a base for any type of cream pie. I’ve included the variations at the bottom. Enjoy!

Cream Pie

2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 Tbs cornstarch
1 Tbs flour
3 cups mild
3 egg yolks – slightly beaten
1 tbs butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
whipping cream
9″ pie shell, baked

In a sauce pan, combine sugar, salt flour, cornstarch and milk with a wire whisk. Stire constangly over medium heat until the mixture thickens. Boil for 1 minute. Then slowly add egg yolks and bring to a boil once again. (It can help to add a couple of spoons of the hot milk mixture to the eggs first before adding to the hot mixture). Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla.

Chocolate: Add 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate to mixture. Stir until chocolate is melted and combined. Pour into pie shell. Chill and top with whipped cream.

Coconut: 1 cup shreadded coconut, toasted. Spring 1/2 over pie crust. Pour cream mixture over coconut and hill. Cover with whipped cream and sprinkle with the remaining coconut.

Banana: Put a thin layer of cream mixture over the bottom of the pie shell. Slice bananas over the thin layer. Continue alternating cream and bananas. Chill. Cover with whipped cream.