Chocolate Pie That Can’t Be Beat

Since she was 5 years old, Jennifer Ostenson has loved spending time in the kitchen. She remembers her mom’s cooking and all of their family traditions that were centered around meals and entertaining. She enjoys the same things today. It pleases Ostenson to have her cooking and serving efforts bring joy to others.

Something that she likes even more than having guests for dinner is feeding her family. The Ostensons are a family of five, with three boys ranging in age from 13 to 16, so there’s a lot of cooking going on around there. She comments that, “It’s a great joy preparing meals for them. They’re big eaters and grateful for the food, so it’s a win-win.”

For the last two years Ostenson has had a job working with a local caterer. She said that she really enjoyed the job and learned so much. “I’ve learned a lot about food, serving and catering and have grown as a person through the experience,” she comments.

Below Ostenson shares with us a chocolate pie recipe that she has served for years and is her favorite. Everyone she serves it too seems to agree. I don’t think you can go wrong making this “best ever” chocolate pie. 

Chocolate Pie (The BEST ever!)
ingredients:

• 1⅛ cups water
• 2 squares unsweetened chocolate
• 1 cup sugar
• 2½ Tb cornstarch
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 Tb butter
• 3 eggs, separated (some eggs just don’t get along)
• ½ c.-1 c. Marshmallow Fluff

(You may choose to use whipped topping instead of meringue. If so, no need to have meringue ingredients. I guess that was easy to figure out.)

prep:

Melt chocolate and water together over medium heat. 

While the chocolate is melting, separate eggs; yolks in a large bowl, whites in a medium bowl, preferably a bowl with straight sides.

Combine sugar, cornstarch and salt and add to chocolate mixture.

Beat the egg yolks until thick.

Add about ½ cup of the hot chocolate mixture to the yolks, mixing until well blended.

Add this mixture back into the chocolate mixture in saucepan and cook over medium heat until thick, 2-3 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and butter. 

In separate bowl, beat egg whites for meringue until soft peaks form. (Soft peaks-When you remove beaters, the egg whites sit up somewhat. Like smallish mountains but not the Matterhorn.)

Stir ½ c –1 c. of marshmallow fluff into beaten egg whites and continue beating until stiff peaks form. (Stiff peaks-Beaten whites stand up like soft serve ice cream tops when you pull a beater up and out. This one’s the Matterhorn.)

Bake at 350 degrees until meringue begins to lightly brown on top of peaks. About 8-10 minutes. 

Chill before serving.

For an alternative topping, use Cool Whip or whipped cream instead of meringue.