OK, let me start by saying that this week I had my first epic fail. Failure on so many levels. And I’m not sure I learned enough to counterbalance the failures to make myself feel good about the project as a whole. Let me follow up by explaining my title- making a pie is a freaking difficult task!

So I decided I wanted to make a pie for pi day yesterday. I figured I would try a sour cream pie crust and then make homemade chocolate filling and top it with homemade whipped cream. It would be the perfect pi day treat and we could enjoy it at 9:26 for the full 3.1415926 experience. Things seemed to go awry from the start. The texture of the crust seemed right until I added the sour cream and suddenly it became a bit of a gloppy mess. I told myself that was probably why you were supposed to stick it back into the fridge before you roll it out… that helped a little. But one of my attempts ended up like this:

Those fingerprints are the desperate final attempts to squish the dough back into a somewhat pie like formation… a desperate but failed attempt…

Believe it or not, when I put this crust in the oven, the dough was all the way up the sides of the pan! Must do more research before i attempt a pie again…

I threw it out. I used the other half of the dough to try again once it was a little more moldable since I wasn’t planning on making a pie that needed a lattice top. The other actually looked pretty good before I put it in the oven. But it came out having shrunk and leaving me with barely any sides to my pie! I did some googling and found out that people usually use “pie weights” to keep this from happening. First timer here- never heard of pie weights. Will attempt again because I have promised one of my besties that I would make her a pie and damn it I want it to be good when I make it for her, so pie weights it is! Next time… but back to this pie… At this point I was frustrated and decided to call it a night on the pie, but I went ahead and saved the second crust anyway- it was better than nothing and I could still fill it with something delicious, even if I knew it would never be cut very neatly and served in a picture perfect way.

So I missed Pi Day. I was exhausted and didn’t feel like even attempting to make the filling. OK, I actually just hadn’t read the directions well enough the first time around so when I realized the filling needed to set 4 hours and that we would miss “Pi” time I thought I would just leave it for the morning- fail #2… or 3 depending on if we are counting each crust separately. So I tried again today. This is where I learned that pie is SO MUCH MORE FATTENING than cake. I was completely floored between the crust and the filling how much sugar, butter, and pure chocolate went into this creation. I am kicking myself for not getting a picture of the amount of chopped up baking bittersweet chocolate before I stirred it in to the filling mixture, but it was MORE than a whole Ghirardelli brick. Here’s a picture of the chocolate filling before it set.

mmmmm… chocolate….

I also had enough filling left over to make some mini pudding cups! And I was glad I did because the filling kind of stayed pudding consistency instead of solidifying into a more pie-like solid form. Even 4.5 hours later.

New idea- I buy store bought pie and top with homemade whipped cream… However, that would be a lot less exciting to blog about, right?

(Luckily, topping with whipped cream makes everything better! At least I knew that part wouldn’t be a bust!)

So that’s my first epic fail in this baking project. Luckily, I had an easy time getting over it thanks to this genius website that generates Kanye-fidence. So if you’re feeling sad because pies are not easy and that common saying is a lie, or because pi day is over… you should check that website out and laugh. Or weep for America. Or both.