.chocolate cream pie.

We were in Ohio visiting my husband's family last month and while we were away, my friend came over to our house every day to check on our cat and feed her for us. To thank her, I made her favorite pie: Chocolate Cream Pie!

Not only does my BFF love it, but so does my oldest daughter. In fact, for Christmas last year, the only thing on her list was her very own chocolate cream pie. That was an easy bill for Santa to fill!

The filling is just homemade pudding. Have you ever made homemade pudding? I wonder how many people in the world make it from scratch or do they take the easy way out and use a box of Jell-o Brand Pudding? I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark that 99.99% of people in the world go with that 2nd option.

Anyway... on to the recipe. I didn't cut into the pie because.. duh.. it was going to a friend. It would have been very poor manners for me to cut into her pie. But know that underneath that cloud of fluffy whipped cream and grated chocolate is a pool of decadent chocolate yumminess.

For the crust:

Crush 1 package chocolate graham crackers in a large zip loc. Add 2 Tbsp brown sugar and 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted. Mix it all together in the bag then dump into a pie plate and press into the bottom and on the sides. Set aside.

For the filling:

3 cups milk or half and half (depends on how bad you want to be)

5 egg yolks (you can save the whites for omelets or angel food cake)

1 3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

1 Tbsp butter

2 tsp vanilla

dash sea salt

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 cup semi sweet chocolate

1 cup milk chocolate

Put 2 1/2 cups milk, the sugar, salt, and cocoa powder in a medium to large saucepan and bring to scald over medium high heat. Do not let this boil!

In a bowl, put the remaining 1/2 cup milk with the cornstarch and egg yolks. Whisk well.

When the milk is steaming and scalded, but not boiling, carefully pour a little bit of the hot milk into the cornstarch/yolk mixture while you continue to whisk. This is going to temper your yolks. If you poured the hot liquid in without stirring, your yolks would begin to cook and you'll have really lumpy pudding. Yuck. Don't let that happen!

Put the pot back on the burner and then pour in the tempered yolks. **NOTE: When I pour the tempered yolks back into the pot with the remaining liquid, I pour it through a fine mesh sieve to keep egg particles or any lumps out of the pot. Lumps=bad!

Kick the heat up on the burner to high and keep stirring that filling as it comes to a boil. This will thicken as it heats up and when it's nice and thick, remove from the burner. Be careful as you whisk because this will bubble and pop up at you like molten lava and it hurts REALLY bad if it touches your skin. Constant stirring is essential at this end phase because it will burn on you if you aren't careful.

Once you've removed the pot from the stove, add the butter, vanilla, and the semi & milk chocolates. You can use whatever brand you want, but note that the better chocolate you use, the better your pie will be. For my friend's pie, I actually used some dark and milk Dove chocolate. YUM!

Stir well using a rubber spatula until the chocolate bits and butter are melted. Carefully pour the filling into your chocolate graham cracker crust. Cover the top completely with Saran and pop in the fridge. You want to let this chill for at least 6 hours (overnight is best) before putting the whipped cream on. This needs to set up otherwise when you put on the whipped cream, filling will ooze out from underneath. Not what we want.

Whipped cream

2 cups heavy or whipping cream

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

In a chilled bowl, add the cold cream. Using a chilled bowl and whisk/beaters will give you the best results for cream. Whip on medium speed until the cream is frothy and you can see ribbons of cream as it whips. Slowly (SLOWLY!) sprinkle in the sugar as you continue to whip. Whip on high until you have firm peaks. Mix in the vanilla.

Spoon onto the top of your set pie and spread out using your spatula or an offset frosting spatula. Take a piece of chocolate bar (in my case, I used a piece of Dove dark chocolate) and grate using a zester or the fine side of a cheese grater.

Keep this pie refrigerated until it's time to eat.

.banana cream pie cupcakes.

I have a problem. I can't stop coming up with new projects for me. LOL My husband retires from the Navy in October and I've been thinking if we move back to the Seattle area (where I'm from), my sisters and I could open a cupcake shop.

Cupcakes are all the rage right now! Martha Stewart even had a big cupcake week last week where she had people submit their cupcake photos for a contest. Martha even shared her favorite cupcake bake shops. I've had a bakery. I could surely have a huge successful CUPCAKE bake shop in the suburbs of Seattle, right? And to make it a family affair with my sisters? Perfect!

My husband told me NO WAY. :( :( And my younger sister, Marcia told me she wants to open a scrapbook store, not a cupcake store. I think I could convince her...or maybe we could do both!? *lightbulb moment!!*

The other night when we were watching a movie, I came up with yummy cupcake flavors. I have a list of about 50. This was one that is on the list. Banana cream cupcakes. Mmmm...

The cupcakes are a basic butter cake. Here's the recipe.


In a mixing bowl, cream together 1 cup (2 sticks) butter and 2 cups sugar.


Add 4 eggs, one at a time, mixing well. Keep mixing on high until the batter becomes really light and fluffy. It will almost look like frosting it's so fluffy. Slowly add 1 cup milk and 1 tsp vanilla.

In a bowl, sift together 3 cups flour, 1 Tbsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Spoon into the butter mixture while the mixer is on low speed.


The finished product will be light and airy. It will look nothing like a cake mix batter. This will give you a wonderful buttery dense cake.


Spoon into paper lined muffin pans. This will make 2 dozen cupcakes. Since we won't eat that many, I split the recipe in half to make only one dozen. Bake at 350* for about 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Dump from the pan and put on cooling rack.

While the cupcakes cool, make a box of banana pudding. Sure I could've made pastry cream myself, but I decided to give myself a break. Maybe when I have that cupcake shop, I might make my own pastry cream.



Slice up a banana and add to chilled pudding. Put the pudding in the fridge and hold until you need it.


Take a paring knife and carefully cut the cupcake top. Remove the top.



Spoon some of the banana pudding into the cupcake.


Pull off the cone part of the top and put the top back on.


Put some graham crackers in a ziploc and smash (or use pre-crushed graham crackers)







Make whipped cream.

Put 1 cup COLD whipping cream in the mixing bowl. Begin whipping on medium speed. If you put it on super HIGH, you'll have cream all over your cabinets and self.















When ribbons begin to form in the cream, add 1/4 cup sugar slowly.

Kick up the speed to HIGH.

When the cream is nice and stiff, add 1 tsp vanilla.


You want a nice stiff whip because we will be piping this onto the cupcakes and you don't want it to just slide right off. Put the whipped cream in a piping bag with a large star tip.








Pipe in a circular fashion making a nice peak. Sprinkle the top lightly with some of those crushed graham crackers and put a slice of banana on top.

Eat immediately (like I have to tell you that ;) ). If you make these ahead of time, keep them in the fridge before serving.

I really think these will do well in my cupcake shop. :D :D

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_34fxnx32d9