On July 2nd, I received an email about B's sister's annual birthday party/4th of July bbq extravaganza with menu details. I had been planning to make a pie for the party, but according to the email, his sister was going to be buying pies in lieu of her birthday cake. I responded with the following:

... I guess that means I should scrap my pie baking plans for the party, huh?

She replied:

hmmm....what kind of pie, lady?

I replied:

I'm not sure yet.. I was thinking maybe just a classic apple pie or blueberry if I could find them and maybe a chocolate cream pie. What kind of pie do YOU want?

She replied:

I was going to pick up a pumpkin & chocolate cream pie @ chow's in lafayette. Apple or blueberry both sound real yummy!

Surely I couldn't let her BUY a pie for her own birthday. I wanted to put my pie making skills to use.

I replied:

...I'll see what I can do.. I make a slammin' pumpkin and choco cream too. Just let me know your preferences.

Yes, I said "slammin'" Can you feel the trouble coming? She decided on chocolate cream pie, what I was secretly hoping she'd pick because I'd been meaning to try Martha's chocolate cream pie recipe.

So fast forward to the 4th of July. Here's the final dessert spread. Mouth watering, isn't it? But little does this photo show how much agony I went through to produce, not one but two desserts. I made that lemon tart, too. Let's rewind one day.

7pm, Thursday:
Head to the store to pick up some butter and missing ingredients.

8pm:
Mix up a batch of Tartine's pie crust recipe and decide to mix up a few different recipes to finally do that pie crust off.

8:30pm:
Pull one disc of the Tartine dough out and start rolling it out.. it starts to crumble. It's not sticking together.. what in the WORLD is going on. Pull out the second disk and the SAME thing happens. This is not going to work. Toss the dough.

9pm:
Mix up a batch of Martha's pie crust AND Dorie Greenspan's crust recipe.

9:30pm:
Start to roll out Martha's.. This one is also not sticking together and is crumbling. Okay something really fishy is going on. Pull out Dorie's and the EXACT same thing is happening. Okay really, what is happening? Yes, I'm starting to freak out.

10pm:
Mix a batch of Cook's Illustrated's Foolproof Pie Crust, yes, the recipe with vodka. The dough looks slightly wetter than normal, but I'm hoping for the best. I've already gone through 6 sticks of butter. This is the point where I start kicking myself for insisting that I make such great pies.

10:30pm:
Roll out the dough, and it's looking promising..

11pm:
Crust goes into the oven. I start the chocolate filling.

11:30pm:
Crust is done. Filling is done. I've made the banana cream pie variation of this filling. before. But the instructions for the chocolate version differs slightly from the banana version. The finished product seems a little loose, but I was hoping it will firm up as it cools.

2am:
Fill the crust. The filling is still seeming pretty loose but I shove it into the fridge and hope again that it will firm up by the next day. I had planned to make the whipped cream at B's sisters house and finish it there. My baking was done for the day, so I thought.

2:30am:
Instead of going straight to bed, I get sucked into the internet for a while..

3:30am:
A little while turned into a lotta while and at this point, I've started to obsess about that chocolate filling, a lot. As I go through the steps that Martha took me through to make the filling, I start to freak out. For the chocolate filling, Martha has you heat a milk mixture and then temper eggs into it. Then instead of returning the entire mixture back to the stove for a few more minutes on heat (as in the banana and coconut versions), she has you mix in the chocolate and then immediately cool the mixture. At this point, maybe you can blame delirium, I was afraid that there might have been a typo in the recipe. Maybe you were supposed to put the chocolate mixture back on heat. Maybe that's why the filling was so loose. The mixture didn't get more time on heat to allow the addition of eggs to thicken it up. THEN I started freaking out even more thinking that my undercooked eggs would get folks sick. Totally NOT cool for something that was supposed to be slammin'.

4am:
Carefully spoon the filling out of the crust and back into the a saucepan. Put the filling back on heat and start whisking, hoping that it would thicken back up.

4:30am:
I'm so screwed. I've basically got thick hot chocolate in my saucepan. Pour out the filling and return to the internet for help.

5am:
Epicurious to the rescue! I find a substitute filling recipe and decide to get a little bit of sleep before I head back to the kitchen.

6am:
B calls and proclaims I'm absolutely crazy for staying up all night over pie. I don't think he quite understood how much pressure I felt in having someone's birthday dessert hinge on my baking skills or lack thereof.

6:30am:
I'm on my way to filling bliss as this recipe looks and TASTES so much more promising.

7am:
The filling is cooling and I decided to see what else I can make with my second disc of pie dough, just for insurance. Enter Epicurious again.. here comes the makings of a lemon brulee tart.

9am:
The pie has been filled and is chilling in the fridge. The lemon tart is done and is cooling. Looks like I am off the hook for now. Judgement doesn't happen until almost 12 hours later.

Recipe: Lemon Brulee Tart

Notes:
This was a big hit among the older crowd at the party. It was really good and really refreshing. As described in the recipe, it's the perfect dessert to accompany a heavy meal. I'd qualify bbq as heavy fare. I followed the recipe exactly except I used the Cooks Illustrated pie crust instead and used a bit of lime juice because I was just shy of 1/2 of lemon juice. Overall the recipe is super easy, especially if you're already familiar with making pie/pastry dough. The filling comes together in seconds. The brulee part was the hardest. It took a lot longer than I thought to caramelize the sugar. I initially thought that it was because there might not have been enough sugar. But in retrospect, I think it was because I kept the tart wrapped and moisture developed on the top.

Recipe: Chocolate Cream Pie

Notes:
Obviously, I, again, used my own crust, deviating from the chocolate crust in the recipe. I also used Martha's recipe for whipped cream (1 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 powdered sugar). If you decide to use regular pie crust, I'd recommend using Martha's technique for keeping the crust crisp, by adding a thin layer of melted semisweet chocolate to the bottom and sides of the crust and allowing it to harden in the freezer for 10 minutes before putting in the filling.

And the verdict? SLAMMIN'! I got so many compliments that I a bit was overwhelmed (and of course I was beaming inside). Everyone said that it was better than Chow's. It's all in the filling. That recipe is a definite winner!

So was it worth it to stay up all night? Hell yeah! I live for making people smile and their stomach's happy!