Recipe Box- Recipe #5

CHOCOLATE WHIP PIE

2 tsp unflavored gelatin

1/4 cup cold water

2 squares Bakers unsweetened chocolate

1 cup cold milk

2/3 cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 package Dream Whip

1 baked 9" pie shell, cooled

Sprinkle gelatin on cold water to soften.  Melt chocolate in 1/2 cup of the milk over hot water.  Beat to blend.  Add gelatin, sugar and salt; stir to dissolve gelatin.  Chill until slightly thickened.  Combine the remaining cold milk, vanilla, and Dream Whip; whip as directed on package.  Fold into the chocolate mixture.  Pour into pie shell.  Chill until firm.  Garnish with additional Dream Whip and shaved chocolate.

Will mine look like this?  Probably not.

Thank goodness the next one is a real recipe.  The post before this one was a little strange. Good to be back in the land of cooking food.  In this case, it is dessert.  Chocolate Whip Pie.  There is even a picture of what it is supposed to look like when completed.  I can assure you that my finished product probably won't look nearly as nice!  

I've never really been great at baking but in this case, I get to use a pre-made pie shell which is pretty hard to mess up!

This should be a breeze, right?

So, right away I noticed something that I had never heard of.  Dream Whip.  What in the world is it?  I've never seen it in the store and was wondering if it was a product that was not used anymore.  I had to google it and saw that it is still made and was to be found in the aisle with the gelatin.  Should be interesting... Here we go!

A couple of things...to melt the chocolate into the milk I made a little double boiler out of two pots.  Water goes in the bottom one and the milk and chocolate go into the top one.  Gently boil the water as the chocolate melts slowly.  The other thing was the recipe said to beat (but didn't specify using what kitchen tool) to blend.  I used a whisk to do this pretty successfully. (As it turns out later, not so successfully)

You might notice the vanilla that I'm using.  There is a farm, not too far away, which sells all kinds of products for cooking, as well as wonderful veggies.  I had mentioned that I was going to go there last fall and a friend of mine starting talking about this special vanilla which they sell.  He said that its called pure mexican vanilla and is the best vanilla in the whole world.  Needless to say, I was a little skeptical of such a claim. But when I went to the farm, they had a whole write-up on it and how wonderful it is.  I think they even featured it on an episode of the Oprah show.  Of course, me not being a baker, knew nothing about this vanilla.  But, I had to buy it anyway (because I'm a foodie nut).  And, it is not cheap!  That little bottle was $11.95!  You can google mexican vanilla and read more about it if you're interested.  True bakers seem to go wild over this stuff.

Super Vanilla!

So far, I've got the chocolate chilling a bit, the pie crust is baked nicely and now I'm on to Miss Dream Whip.

As I'm whipping up dreamy, I'm thinking why would anyone use this product when you can just whip up a dreamier version using heavy cream, a little sugar and the wonderful fancy vanilla?  In fact, I felt a little weird putting that fabulous vanilla in such a product.

I realize that the whipped cream version is much higher in calories, and fat, but it's dessert for cyin' out loud.  The Dream whip only has 15 calories per 2Tbsp prepared but even though the ingredients say that it contains milk- there are a lot of non-food things in this prepared dessert topping.

This is the best that I could do.  I can tell you that the chocolate without the dream whip tastes like a hyped up chocolate pudding.  When it is slightly chilled (but still a little warm) it tasted delicious.  I could have eaten the whole pot of it!  When I added the dream whip, I just didn't care for it.  It's like I can taste all of the non-food things in the whipped product.  The pie is chilling now but I don't think I want to use anymore Dream whip to decorate.

I know, not true to the recipe but I just couldn't do dreamy anymore.

Also, it was difficult to fold in the chocolate mixture.  I'm not sure if it's because I chilled it too long or what?  Maybe I should have used my mixer to blend the chocolate and milk?  All questions such as these could readily be answered by a baking oriented cook.

There are lumps of chocolate gelatin-definitely not silky texture

 Final reviews were not too bad.  My husband thought that the pie crust was really good.(Hehe, remember I didn't make that!)  He also pointed out that he thought that this was a pie for kids.  I agree with that assessment.  I think there are probably much better chocolate silk pie recipes out there and I really didn't care for the Dream Whip.  I wouldn't make it as an ending to a nice meal entertaining a group of adults.

Doesn't look like the picture from the recipe, does it?