Monday, June 13, 2011

Follow the yellow brick road? How about the chocolate pie road!

I can’t follow directions.


I can’t follow directions, I can’t follow a recipe, I can’t even follow the yellow brick road – I take detours, wander off for a while, and then come back having taken a few more steps than were originally prescribed.

Therefore, I am celebrating my inability to walk in a straight line by rebooting my past blogging efforts and doing it for real. For real real. Like, actually posting more than once a year. So, let’s get this thing started with something to lead you off the track of your diet, if you were on one. I’m sorry, it’s my moral imperative in life to lead you astray, especially with this recipe. Go make it now, or at the very least this weekend, because it will improve your life, quantifiably. I’m hoping that you can follow directions better than I can!


French Coconut & Chocolate Pie


Ingredients:


• 3 whole Eggs, Beaten
• 1 ½ cup Sugar
• 1 cup Flaked Coconut
• 250g (ish) Butter, Melted
• 1 Tablespoon White Vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• ¾ cup chocolate, any kind
• 1 pinch Salt
• 1 whole 9" Uncooked Pie Shell


Directions:


1. Preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C.
2. Press pie shell into 9” pie plate.
3. Mix: eggs, sugar, coconut, vinegar, salt and vanilla.
4. Melt the chocolate in the microwave for 30 seconds, and then for 15 second intervals after that, stirring each time so that the chocolate doesn’t burn. After it’s completely melted, add it to your filling mixture.
**Note: you can use any chocolate you like – milk, dark, white, whatever. I used milk chocolate and it was dee-lish-us.
5. Melt the butter in a separate bowl, then incorporate enough (not necessarily all) to make your filling nice and liquid-y, but not runny.
6. Pour into the pie shell and bake at 350°F/180°C for 50 minutes to 1 hour.
7. Let cool slightly before serving, otherwise you will have lots of oozing. Unless you like that kind of thing, like this guy.


Mine didn't look anything like the photo I've posted, (a) because this one doesn't include chocolate, its just plain ol' French Coconut Pie, which I guess you could do, if you were boring, and (b) because I have zero baking technique to speak of, I just make the stuff taste good, who cares what it looks like, so I won't subject you to having to look at the mostly-brown pie that came out of my oven. 

Wow that was a long and probably not-grammatically correct sentence, which is normally one of my greatest pet peeves, especially in the press.  Luckily, I never wanted to actually write for a living, and so am not subject to those silly laws of grammar.  But, I mean seriously, if you are a reporter or a copy editor for some kind of publication, I would hope.  I'm always finding spelling mistakes, grammatical problems, and just plain poor writing on news sites - for pete's sake, someone proof-read that sh!t!!!  And now I'll gingerly step down from my soapbox and go hide in the corner now....

Here is something else to make you happy, now that you've had your pie - Fluffy Ducks!!  If it doesn't make you happy, then I'm not sure I want to be your friend.  And if you feel like being a little bit more learned, here's an interesting photojournalist's collection of photos from behind Russian lines. 

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There's been another earthquake in Christchurch, I can't think of anything else to write today.