What's Cooking Wednesday: Chocolate Fudge Pie

One of my first best friends here in Alabama was a coworker of mine. I would keep going on and on about how we instantly connected and are basically soul sisters, but I don’t want to cry because now she's in Florida and I haven't seen her in way too long. So I’ll just get straight to the delicious pie recipe she once gave me. That's what you're here for anyway, right?

I’m not a chocolate pie lover. Yeah, you read that right. In my love for sweets, I've just never loved anything that was all chocolate. Although, I will say, chocolate fudge is an exception and maybe that's why I love this pie. 

My sweet friend brought this pie to work one day when we were having a Thanksgiving lunch in our department. Since she was my bestie, the only right thing to do was to have a slice of the pie. And it was heaven. Just the most perfect version of a chocolate pie I could have ever imagined. It was a thick, gooey fudgey consistency on the inside and it had a top layer of crystalized perfection. I immediately insisted on the recipe since it was basically my chocolate pie unicorn and, thankfully, she was willing to share!

It took me almost six years to make it myself. Better late than never, right? But I have since made the pie five times in the past three weeks, so you know it’s good - AND it’s turned out perfect each time (so it’s really not that difficult!). 

I typically post dinner/meals on my What's Cooking Wednesday posts (although, admittedly, I’ve been really MIA this summer), but I had so many friends on Instagram request this recipe. So here it is. 

What You’ll Need:
Frozen pie crust or make your own*
2 eggs 
2 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
1 cup sugar
1 stick butter

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350
Poke holes in your pie crust and bake it according to directions. 
In a double boiler on medium heat melt together sugar, butter, and chocolate. 
Whisk eggs for one minute. 
Remove chocolate mix from heat and temper eggs. 
Mix eggs into chocolate mixture and blend well. 
Pour into pie crust. 
Bake 20-25 minutes.
Let the pie cool. 
Serve plain or topped with ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, sifted powder sugar, or Or honestly, anything your heat desires.

Recipe Notes:

• *for the majority of the times I’ve made this pie, I’ve made my own pie crust. I use this recipe and follow it exactly. Once it’s made, I bake it 10-15 minutes before pouring in fudge mixture. 
• When baking the entire pie, I’ll initially bake for 20 minutes and then check the pie. If it still jiggles I’ll keep checking in one-minute increments. Pull it out as soon as there’s no more jiggle. 
• I think the pie is best when it’s completely cooled and at least 12 hours post baking. So if you’re making it for a dinner, a friend, or a get-together, I’d recommend making it the day before or morning of. 

The pie crust recipe above makes two - so you have to option of making two pies or freezing one of the discs of dough for later. 

Once you roll out your pie crust to the appropriate diameter, you'll want to roll it up on your rolling pin. This makes transferring it to the pie dish a whole lot easier.  Once it's on the pin, you just unroll it over top of the dish.

After it's on the dish, use a pair of kitchen scissors and cut excess dough from around the dish leaving about one-inch hanging off the edges. You will then use the excess hanging off to crimp around your finger and create the edge of the pie crust. Go back to this recipe to learn how to do that.

My mom and the girls helped out with poking holes in the crust before baking it! This is a necessary step as steam releases during baking and if it can't get out, your pie will inflate to a big 'ole ball of pie crust. The girls used their Minnie Mouse forks and hand no problem helping! 

This is how your crust should look just before going into the oven. My edge-crimping isn't perfect at all, but I have grown to love the imperfections of the edge. It gives more of a rustic, homemade look in my opinion. 

When the crust is baking, I start melting the sugar, butter, and chocolate in a double boiler. If you don't have an actual double boiler, that's ok. Just fill any pot about half way with water and then place a glass bowl over top of it and you've got a double boiler! I prefer the glass bowl. I have a double boiler, but below is what I typically use.

After your chocolate goodness is all melted, you'll want to beat the two eggs and then use the hot mixture to temper your eggs - and this just means bringing the eggs' temperature up slowly. This is necessary because otherwise, you'd cook/scramble your eggs if you just immediately poured the hot chocolate mix into the eggs. And no one wants scrambled eggs in their chocolate pie. 

If you have no clue how to temper eggs (making this recipe for the first time was the first time I tempered eggs too!) get on YouTube or food blogs and there will be plenty of information on how to do this correctly. 

I would get a little of the hot chocolate mixture on my whisk and then whisk the eggs. I kept repeating this until my eggs were right at room temperature and then slowly poured the eggs into the chocolate. It worked!

And the end result is magic! It's perfectly gooey and chocolate perfection!

Pour your mixture into the crust and bake it 20 minutes or so! See my notes above for this! 

My pies have turned out perfect ever single time I have made them. Doesn't that just look delicious? Trust me, it is! Please let me know if you make this and how it turns out! I promise it will be the talk of the party! Enjoy!