Chocolate Pie, Mrs. Dorothy Jordam. Salem's Favorite Recipes

Attempt one... deeeeee-licious
Attempt 2, almost just as good...

Recipe:

2 cups scalded milk (save a little cold milk for dry mixture)
2 egg yolks, beaten
3/4 cups sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 PLUS 1 tbs cornstarch
2 tbs cocoa powder
2 tbs butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix together cornstarch, salt, sugar and cocoa. Mix cold milk and beaten yolks together, add to dry mixture. Then add to hot milk and cook in a double boiler until thick. Add butter and vanilla. Cool and pour into baked pie shell. Top with meringue *. Bake at 400 for 2 - 3 minutes or until light brown.

I made this pie 2 times, and will probably attempt a 3 version of it which I think combines the best aspects of both methods.

First attempt, I made the pie exactly as the the recipe said to, only I used a graham cracker crust that had a fair amount of brown sugar and butter mixed into it. The pie was gone within 6 hours, and there were only 2 of us eating it.

However, I had a couple of issues with the original recipe... namely the meringue. Which to be totally fair isn't really even part of the recipe... technically.

But the pie called for 2 egg yolks, that left me with 2 egg whites. So I made meringue with the 2 eggs whites because I couldn't justify wasting an egg yolk so that I could add a third white to my meringue. It mostly covered the pie, but it was very thin, and because I have only a stand mixer and not a hand-held, 2 whites wasn't really enough to reach the whipping attachment very well so the meringue was a bit runnier than I wanted it to be.

The solution I came up with?
Add a 3rd yolk to the pie filling, reduce the amount of cornstarch, then add the third egg white to the meringue.

By the time I was finished the recipe was closer to this:
1 1/2 cups scalded milk
1/2 cup cold milk
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbs cocoa powder
1 tbs strong coffee
2 tbs butter

Meringue
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
1/2 cup sugar


In one bowl combine yolks and sugar until well blended, add cornstarch salt, cocoa powder and coffee. Mix well. Pour into saucepan of scalded milk and whisk constantly until thick. Take off heat, whisk in butter. Pour into baked pie crust.

* In another bowl beat egg whites, salt and sugar until thick, but still spreadable.

Spread over pie. Bake for 4-5 minutes at 400.

Upping the eggs helped a lot... though as I was typing this up, I just realized that I forgot to add the butter. So it appears that you could, if you wanted, skip the butter altogether and still have a pretty awesome pie.

I will say, the graham cracker crust really takes this pie from "good" to "freaking amazing". My next attempt I'll use the modified filling recipe, with the graham cracker crust.