The Boat Sinker

Yay...holidays for one. Not exactly excited to be back in that boat at all. No real cooking this year per se; made the mushroom gratin thingy for dinner at Tessa's and brought butter to Kimma's for lunch (you just had to be there for the butter thing; don't even try to make me explain). Hard to believe that I made the mushroom gratin thingy only a year ago for a totally different sort of Thanksgiving...sometimes it seems like it was a hundred years ago and definitely another lifetime.

Speaking of boats, because you know how I like to stretch things for the blog theme, the night before Turkey Day, we gathered in Kimma's kitchen and watched her prepare dessert for the next day. (Watching is so much better than doing, don't you think? Although, I did help load the dishwasher!) Kimma is all about the big ass dinner, and I am damn grateful that she is! So, in addition to carrot cake and pumpkin pie, she made "boat sinker" pies.

I am assuming they are known as "boat sinkers," because it's within the realm of possibility that you could sink a boat after having a piece of this dense, fudgey, chocolatey goodness. This pie embodies all that is simultaneously bad and good about Thanksgiving--the bad-for-you yummy good things.

Boat Sinker Pie

5 sticks of butter (yes Virginia, that is FIVE sticks of butter; Paula Deen would be proud)

1 cup dark corn syrup

7.5 oz unsweetened chocolate

3 cups of sugar

9 eggs (have to balance out the butter somehow)

3 tsp vanilla

2-3 unbaked pie shells (the original recipe says it makes 2, but it always makes 3 very full pies...trust us on this one)

* Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

* Microwave butter and corn syrup together in a microwave-safe bowl for 9 minutes on HIGH. Stir well. Add unsweetened chocolate and microwave an additional 4 minutes. Set aside.

* Place sugar in a large bowl; stir in eggs and vanilla by hand, until well blended. Stir in chocolate mixture...temper a little of it into the egg mixture so the eggs don't scramble.

* Pour filling evenly into the pie shells--the filling is extremely liquid, so be very careful when you are porting the unbaked pies to the oven.

* Bake for 22 minutes at 325 degrees. Reduce heat to 275 degrees and bake for 25 more minutes. Cool to room temperature (if you can stand it) before serving. Add whipped cream and/or ice cream before serving.

I am in total awe of a recipe that has this amount of butter and calls for microwaving it with corn syrup...sounds like kitchen science experiment disaster in the making, doesn't it? At the very least, I'm always waiting for the door to blow off the microwave during the process. And, another fraught-with-danger moment is the transfer of the filled pie shells to the oven...that liquid chocolatey filling is not an easy thing to move without spilling.

Baking the pie transforms it into a dense chocolate masterpiece...with a deep chocolate flavor and a fudgey texture. I find it highly amusing that the recipe suggests adding whipped cream or ice cream when serving...like you need any more "butter fat" than the 5 sticks already included!

Yeah, it's been a craptastic year for the most part, and I know that Thanksgiving is not just about the food...no, seriously, I heard that somewhere--not just about the food. I'm thankful for:

* Poodles (yes, even the poodles who trashed my house while I went to the grocery store; was gone 45 minutes, and they managed to eviscerate several stuffed animals, which made the living room look like an Aspen ski slope, AND chewed a hole in Janet's birthday present...which was a jigsaw puzzle, so I told her it was "marked with love," and that she was damn lucky that the New Hotness didn't decide to eat one of the pieces!)

* Butter, of course, and cheese;

* The brave new world coming in January;

*and most of all--my friends, both old and new.