French Silk Pie and how I make it.

This Thanksgiving, I made three desserts. It was during the consumption of these desserts that I realized that I had gotten all of the recipes from my mother. I looked into her green index card box earlier in the week and pulled out several recipes. One was a newspaper clipping-probably from the Lanc. Farming-for French Silk Pie. She had glued it onto an index card. I don't know if she ever made it but my family knows who to thank for this velvety luxury.

This is the original recipe and then I will follow it with my own tweaking advice.

French Silk Pie

 1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, unbeaten
1 square unsweetened chocolate, melted
1/2 pint whipping cream
1 baked 8-inch pie shell

Cream butter and sugar.  Add melted chocolate and vanilla. 
Add eggs one at a time and beat 5 min. after each egg.
Pour into cooled pie shell and chill at least 3 hours. (I couldn't wait that long.)
Top with whipped cream and garnish with chopped nuts.

Recipe credits to Mrs. M.H.Hand~

Make sure the butter has been out and is softened before you try to cream it.

I cracked the eggs into a mug and added one at a time from there.
I doubled the recipe the first time and tripled it the second and it works fine.
I did not beat each egg addition exactly 5 min. because I had so many eggs it would have taken from 20-30 min. to beat them and my machine was getting hot.

Melt the chocolate in a metal bowl over hot water on the stove.
Never get water in chocolate.
I am quite sure that I doubled the chocolate which means I quadrupled it the first time
and sextupled it the second time.

Wow. I can't believe that none of those words came up on spell check.

I kept scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula
and with my finger, if the truth must be told.

I baked a bought frozen crust the first time.

After it was baked and cooled,
I piled in the chocolatey goodness.

I forgot to chill it for 3 hours and it would have worked better if I had
but I made so much whipped cream it didn't really matter
and it sat nicely on top of the chocolate
and then they chilled out together.

Eat and make happy noises.


The second time I made it, which was today,
I made a different crust.
I adapted it from the dessert-BTS cake.

Take 1 1/4 cups flour
Take 1 1/4 stick butter-softened
Take 1 1/4 cups of chopped pecans or walnuts-(I mixed walnuts, pecans, and slivered almonds)

Mix or cut together and press in bottom of a 13x9 inch pan.
Bake at 350 for 20 min.
Cool.

Add chocolate.
Cool.

To make whipped cream,
take a cup to a pint of cold whipping cream and place in a cold mixing bowl and beat at medium speed until it thickens a little. Add several tablespoons of 10x sugar while it is mixing. Increase speed and whip until it is cool whip consistency. If you walk away and do something else, you will have sweetened butter before you know it. So pay attention. ;)

Spread whipped cream on top of chocolate and chill
unless you are in a hurry like I was and need to taste test it right away.

You could sprinkle chopped nuts on top if you want to or peel some chocolate off a bar and have some curly cues. But it really isn't necessary.

Have fun!