I believe we have a winner, chocolate-pie wise

For several weeks now, I have been making recipes of chocolate pies in a quest to recreate the chocolate pie of Mrs. Wolves' youth. Yesterday, on New Year's Day, I apparently kicked the year off right and found THE pie recipe. First off, you will need sugar, flour, milk, baker's chocolate, three egg yolks, butter, vanilla and graham crackers:

Obviously, you can just buy a graham cracker crust and avoid these steps. I have no problem with you doing this. If you choose to make your own crust, put a sleeve of graham crackers (12 crackers), busted up, into a blender:

Melt about 6 tablespoons of butter:

Grind those crackers until they are fine crumbs:

Mix in the butter and 1/4 cup of sugar. Mix it up right:

Press the mixture into a pie pan:

Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes:

Set it aside and let's get on with the pie. Combine 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 2 cups of milk and 2-4 ounces (depending on desired chocolatey-ness) of unsweetened or semi-sweet baker's chocolate in a saucepan:

Stir over medium heat:

Once the mixture begins to bubble, stif for two more minutes:

Beat your egg yolks:

Add a large spoonful of your hot chocolate mix to the eggs gradually, stirring it in to avoid cooking the yolks:

Add the warm yolk mixture into the chocolate mixture:

Stir it in, cook for another 90 seconds, then remove from heat. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 2 tablespoons of butter:

Once you mix it up right, pour the mixture into your pie crust and chill until set:

Nobody took any pictures of individual slices being served, but put some whipped cream on top and enjoy the hell out of it. Best recipe yet.

Oh, dear God, is he making another pie?

Oh, hell yeah! Told you, Mrs. Wolves wants the chocolate pie of her childhood. As her mother no longer is around to help with this, I am test-driving recipe after recipe to find the elusive perfect chocolate pie. The good part? Ain't no damn thing, apparently, as a bad chocolate pie. So without further ado, hear goes Recipe No. 3.

You will need 3 tablespoons of cornstarch, 5 tablespoons of cocoa, 1 14-oz can of sweetened conensed milk, 3 egg yolks (beaten but still defiant), 2 tablespoons of butter, a teaspoon of vanilla, 1-2/3 cups of water and 1 9-inch pastry shell, baked.

OK, so separate those yolks (one of these days, I have to get me one of those fancy-schmancy things that you crack an egg over and it separates the yolk from the white. As it is, I crack the egg into a bowl and lift the yolk out with a spoon):

Beat the yolks, the set them aside:

Mix the cornstarch, cocoa and water in a saucepan. No heat yet. Beat until smooth:

Mix it up right. Smooth yet:

Once smooth, stir in the egg yolks.

Then stir in the sweetened condensed milk:

Add the butter and vanilla, and stir constantly over low heat:

Cook until it thickens:

Once it gets thick, remove the mixture from heat and let cool a little, stirring occasionally. Then, pour into the pre-baked pie crust:

One the pie cools some more, you can chill in the refrigerator. Serve with whipped cream, and bon appetiti.

What's this? More dessert food porn?

In the never-ending search (at least so far -- I assume that at some point we will find what we are looking for) for the chocolate pie recipe that Mrs. Wolves deems acceptable in keeping with the standards of her youth, today we test drive a second chocolate pie recipe. Last week's pie was excellent and led to family fights over the last piece, but it was not the pie that Mrs. Wolves is seeking. Too brownie-like, even though it was clearly not a brownie.

In any event, this week we went with a no-bake pie. It uses a traditional dough pie crust (I bought one -- the only time I ever tried to make a pie crust, it sucked so bad the pie was inedible. I don't do that anymore.) but I suppose you could use a graham cracker crust, chocolate or otherwise. Up to you. If you go with a store-bought dough crust, follow the directions for baking it prior to filling. Usually you're looking at 10 minutes at 375. Read the label instructions and act accordingly.

Once you have resolved your crust issues, move on to the filling. You will need 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 2 cups of milk, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and the pie crust we discussed before:

Mix the sugar, flour and salt in a pan, then add one cup of milk:

Whisk that stuff until it is smooth. Mix it up right, people:

Bring it to a boil over medium heat. (The recipe calls for a double-boiler, but I find that to be a cheap ploy to sell more pans, complicate recipes and make you work harder. They're just compensating for people who can't pay attention. Stir that stuff like a big dog, and you'll be fine.) Anyway, stirring constantly -- and I mean constantly, or the double-boiler people win -- keep that at a low boil until it thickens into a smooth kind of stuff. Might take two minutes of boil (probably less):

Remove the thickened stuff from the heat. At some point here, you took the two eggs and beat them into the other cup of milk. You will now stir that mixture gradually into the hot mixture you already took off the heat:

Mix that up right, then put it back on the heat and bring to a boil. Stir until it thickens again (won't take long, please pay attention) then remove from the heat and add the butter and vanilla:

Mix that up right. Toss in the half-cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips you've had waiting ever since I said "chocolate."

Stir that until the chocolate melts, mixing it up right.

Pour that smooth, well-mixed mixture into the pie crust of your choice that you selected and prepared when we started:

Enjoy that bad boy.

Mrs. Wolves mangled the first piece out, but enjoyed the hell out of it:

Feel free to put whipped cream on that sucka.  Also, I believe there will be Chocolate Pie Recipe No. 3 on Christmas. Stay tuned

Dessert game food porn, people!

I was going to include this with the game food porn post, but it was getting long, so I broke it off. Because the Packers' epic win over the Cowgirls was a 4:30 game, Sunday's game food was also dinner. Naturally, we had to have dessert. Because Mrs. Wolves wants to find the chocolate pie of her childhood, I have about a thousand chocolate pie recipes that I have to try. Sunday was the first. So here goes.

First of all, make a graham cracker pie crust. Or buy one. I made one, using nine chocolate graham crackers and a half stick of butter. Run the grahma crackers through a blender, mix in a melted half stick of butter (and a little water if needed to fully moisten the crumbs), then spread the mixture over a nine-inch pie pan. Bake at 375 for 5-10 minutes, until set. Put that sucker aside.

Line up the rest of your ingrediments. You're looking at a stick of butter, 2-3 ounces of unsweetened or semi-sweetened chocolate, 2 tablespoons of flour, a pinch of salt, 1-1/4 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup -- Karo, people -- 2 tablespooons of coffee liqueur, 1-1/2 teaspoons of vanilla and 3 eggs.

 Melt the butter and the chocolate in a medium saucepan over medium heat.

 Remove that mixture from the heat, stir in the flour and salt. Mix it up right.

Once that mixture is stirred smooth, add the sugar, corn syrup, coffee liqueur and vanilla. Again, mix it up right:

You being all mixed up now, add the eggs one at a time. Mix each egg thoroughly before adding the next one. Seriously, you guys:

All eggs added and mixed up right, pour the mixture into the crust you made or bought:

Obviously, I was using a wooden spoon, but you might want to switch to a spatula at this point to make sure that all of that chocolately goodness makes its way into the crust. Anyway, put that into the oven at 375 for about 30 minutes. When it is done, the top of the pie will be a little cracked, kind of like brownies:

Enjoy that sucker. More chocolate pies coming soon. That one, by the way, is already gone.

Game food porn, served with a huge comeback win!

The Packers rallied from a dismal first half that left them 23 points down at halftime, scoring touchdowns on their first five possesions of the second half while pretty much stifling the Cowboys' offense. Tony Romo was Romo and threw two picks in the last two minutes to give the Packers the win. And it all happened to the tune of some truly magnificant game food. Without further ado, here's what we had:

Because we were the 4:30 game, this was going to be a dinner-ish game food night. Still, we had true game food, including onion straws, complete with dipping sauce:

A vegetable tray with spinach dip:

The ever-present potato skins:

And barbecue ribs, which were really fricking good:

Two other items on the menu, both of which will get step-by-step treatment, as one was brand new and the other, while featured repeatedly in game food porn posts, has never been given recipe-style treatment. So here we go.

Start with about a dozen wings. That's complete wings, people.

You will cut these wings up at each of the two joints, separating the drummie part from the  two-bone part, and the wingtip from the two-bone part:

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need wing education. In any event, save those wing tips (two of which you can see on the lower right side of the cutting board above) and put them in the freezer to make chicken stock later. Or don't. See if I fucking care.

Now that you have chopped up your wings, gather your ingrediments. You will need an egg, about a cup of flour, a beer, some salt and pepper and the wings.

Dust the wing pieces with flour. It helps the batter stick to the wings:

Now, mix a cup of flour and one egg with some salt and pepper:

Slowly add the beer:

The batter should look like pancake batter when it is right. If it doesn't take the whole beer, drink the rest. That's why you use cold beer:

Batter up those wings:

 They should be nicely coated with batter, like so:

 

Drop those bad boys in the deep fryer (not all at once -- about six at a time):

Choose your sauce:

Sauce them up. Buffalo sauce:

 Or Asian teriyaki:

 We did both. There are a million sauces. Find the one that works for you and use it. Bon appetit. Got more food porn in the next post, but decided to break it up.