Smaller French Silk Pie

Last week I was feeling nostalgic and made a Dream Pie using the recipe on the Dream Whip box. It's the same recipe from when I was 10, but as I tore open envelopes and dumped powder into the bowl I could smell disappointment. And my nose was right, because the pie didn't taste nearly as good as when I was a kid. It just didn't live up to my idealized version, so I decided to make up for it with a French Silk Pie.

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Origin of French Silk Pie

It feels obligatory to say that French Silk Pie is not French. It's an American invention most often credited to Betty Cooper, who won $1,000 for it in the 1951 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Her version was an 8-inch pie, which was a popular dish size back then. The pie is described as "magnificent, rich, creamy and smooth" and the big selling point is that you don't have to cook the butter, chocolate and raw egg filling. Yay! Or yay? Raw eggs.

French Silk Pie No-Cook Filling

It's always interesting to see how French Silk Pie recipes deal with raw egg safety. Cooking the filling is one method, while some suggest using pasteurized eggs or egg substitute. I almost went with a cooked version, but my grocery store was completely out of eggs (truck issue) and only had a giant carton of Egg Beaters. So I went with the Egg Beaters French Silk Pie.

Egg Beaters in French Silk

I like Egg Beaters. They're full of protein, low in calories, and pasteurized for safety. Their flavor has improved over the years, and they're a little more convenient than before. They used to be sold frozen and you'd have to thaw each little carton before using, but now you can buy a carton of them, thawed and ready to go. So I used two Egg Beaters in place of eggs in this pie and they worked just fine.

2 oz Unsweetened Chocolate

Some French Silk recipes call for semisweet chocolate, but since the original version used unsweetened, I used 2 oz of Ghirardelli unsweetened. Actually, I used slightly over 2 oz. The recipe calls for 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate, but I melted it in my big double boiler and didn't want to have to obsessively scrape every millimeter of its surface to get all the chocolate, so I used about 2 ¼ oz. I should have just used the microwave.

Grainy Sugar and Butter

While you don't have to cook the filling, you do have to use a high speed mixer for at least 5 minutes to whip the sugar and butter. I started with cold butter so that I could beat it for a little longer and give the sugar more time to dissolve. After 5 minutes, the mixture still felt a little grainy, but after everything else was added and the pie sat, the graininess smoothed out. Cooking it would have been easier.

9 or 8 Inch Gluten-Free Oreos Crust

Fact: They did not have Gluten-Free Oreos in 1951. The original crust was made with refrigerated pie dough, so a lot of modern versions call for that or a homemade pastry crust. I needed a gluten-free crust, so I used 21 Gluten-Free Oreos, 4 tablespoons of butter and a pinch of salt. This was enough for a shallow 9 inch crust, but also would be perfect for an 8 inch size pie, should you be lucky enough to have an 8 inch dish. You can find them here and there, but you may just want to do what I did, which was to use a 9 inch dish and make a shallower pie piled high with whipped cream.

Other Favorite Chocolate Pies

As much as I enjoyed making this pie and trying out the Egg Beaters, I have to agree with the person who marked up the old recipe in my book. French Silk Pie is just too rich. But that suits some palates, so it's still a great pie. My personal favorites are Diner Style Chocolate Pie, Michele's Perfect and the much less rich but still delicious Earl's. I also completely forgot that I had an actual homemade version of Dream Pie. What I loved most about this most recent French Silk recipe was the Gluten-Free Oreos crust. It's my new go-to crumb crust.

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