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Minny's Chocolate Pie

Do you have a book that you’ve read multiple times? The Help is one of those books for me (along with The Shipping News and The Horse Whisperer) and I’ve always loved the idea of Minny’s Chocolate Pie, without the flavorful gift because that’s just nasty. With the help of my dear friend Google, several recipes for “Minny’s Chocolate Pie” popped up.

In the past, I’ve made chocolate cream or pudding pies, but never a simple, straight forward chocolate pie like this one. After being completely bummed out after watching 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, I needed to cheer myself up with some quality time in the kitchen to get my mind off of the circumstances in which American lives were lost, for no apparent (good) reason.

Since I am who I am, I tweaked the original recipe slightly even though there was absolutely nothing wrong with the original recipe—it’s very rich despite it’s simplicity. It tastes like a hershey bar pie.

Somehow the cat always feels the need to get into at least one shot.

The second time I made this, I switched out the original cocoa powder for dark chocolate, and instead of using vanilla extract, I added some high quality bourbon even though my husband told me I was wasting good booze. Hello, why would I cook with something I wouldn’t drink? Well, in the end he loved it and had one too many slices. I may have had a slice for breakfast with my cup of coffee.

The original recipe consists of ingredients most of us have in our pantry, which is my favorite thing about this recipe. It’s not fancy; you don’t have to use top of the line ingredients unless that’s all you have lying around. I think this pie would be the perfect finale to a casual barbecue dinner party or even dinner on Wednesday night. Yes, the pie is for dinner. No? Well, it’ll make an awesome lunch, too. My point is, this is not a fancy pie and you don’t have to be Julia Child to pull this recipe off.

When finished, the top is going to be slightly crunchy (or at least firm) while the inside is smooth like velvet (but not runny!) It’s best at room temperature, though the husband did say it was pretty tasty cold out of the refrigerator the next day.

Ingredients (original ingredients are marked by *):

1 packaged pie dough crust
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons dark cocoa powder (*unsweetened cocoa powder)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs, beaten
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon high quality bourbon (*pure vanilla extract)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, for serving

Directions:

Follow the instructions on the packaging to lightly brown your pie crust. Don’t forget to poke holes along the bottom and the side of the crust.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk the sugar with the cocoa powder, butter, eggs, evaporated milk, bourbon (or vanilla extract) and salt until smooth.
Pour the filling into the pie shell and bake for about 45 minutes, until the filling is set around the edges but a little jiggly in the center. Cover the crust with strips of foil or a crust shield halfway through baking. Transfer the pie to a rack and let cool completely before cutting into wedges.
Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream and enjoy.

Back to the movie for a second—I am flabbergasted that in this day and age, no one has been held accountable for the tragic events that took place on September 11th, 2012. Being that my husband was in the military (he was medically discharged), it made me incredibly angry that people who have made the decision to protect their country and leave their family behind can just be left in a basic war-zone. I couldn’t help but wonder, if those contract workers would have been given permission to “deploy” immediately after the attack began, would Ambassador Stevens be alive today? I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth behind the events that took place that night, but I do hope there are consequences for those people who failed to do their jobs. If you’ve seen the movie, what do you think?