baking: chocolate creme pie with meringues

Okay, I'm a terrible person for dropping of the face of the proverbial earth so to speak, but I was working terribly hard on a lot of terribly important and time sensitive projects so I apologize profusely but some things had to drop by the wayside and this was one of them. Just one week until the sale, and therefore all projects must be finalized by then, thus the working very hard. However, in the meantime, I made a dessert that resulted in a pile of dishes something like this:

Impressive no?
I have been wanting to make one of the chocolate pies from this AAAAAAAAAAAAMAZING vintage Hershey's cookbook for a long time. They just look so retro. So this was the event. Especially because my friend who was curating the Thanksgiving menu made a point of mentioning none too subtly that she loved chocolate creme pie.

There was a crumbly crust and a gooey chocolate filling.

And after all that deliciousness was completed (which involved a lot of constant-stirring and waiting-to-thicken)I got to try my hand at making meringue.

I've got one thing to say: beat egg white and cream of tartar until they form stiff peaks.

It took a long time. And even so I wasn't sure it worked ok, because you know, you just don't know, until you cut into it. Don't know if the filling set, don't know if the meringues hardened. Just don't know..... But when the beautiful monstrosity was pulled out of it's final visit to the oven it was wonderfully browned and smelled so good. Fingers crossed right?

And pretty soon after it was cut into, this is what it looked like. So I'd put the check in the success column for this, right? Defiantly.