Broken Oven + Pi Day = No-Bake Chocolate-Raspberry Cream Pie.

Okay! So! I was going through some things today and stumbled across this post and thought....well. I could blog again.

And since this was all queued up and ready to go......

A pie recipe from a few years ago! (any pictures would surely have been in whatever computer I was using at that time, but as I don't even live in the same country anymore, they are lost.

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Look, as far as I'm concerned, Pi Day (March 14, 'cause 3.14, get it?) is a delicious and fantastic holiday. I also am not pleased with my malfunctioning oven. It doesn't really do things like "hold heat" or anything, although it does broil, which is better than nothing. I've made shortbread cookies with that broiler.

I would do fantastically at one of those weird Top Chef challenges where they make you do things in a Target store or in a foil pit or something. But this isn't about my excellent and useful skill set, this is about pie.

I wanted to celebrate Pi Day. I wanted pie. I like pie. So I poked around on-line and, on the Bon Appetit website, I found exactly the recipe I wanted.

No Bake Chocolate-Raspberry Cream Pie. It was easy! In fact, the hardest part was finding the creme fraiche at the grocery store. Also, in finding chocolate wafers that are corn-free, but I was at Jewel and knew it would be a challenge - luckily Annie's to the rescue! Chocolate graham crackers shaped like bunnies! How could I lose? (I could not.) I barely altered the recipe, the pure unadulterated version of which can be found here.

Ingredients:

- seven ounces of chocolate-graham cookies
- 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- six tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into bits
- 1/4 cup sugar
- one tin of 14-oz sweetened condensed milk
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- the zest of one lemon
-  1/4 cup creme fraiche
- two 6 oz containers of raspberries (2 1/2 cups)

Now, here are the absurdly easy directions.

First, lightly grease your pie plate. I had more crust left over at the end, so I used mini tart tins to make two small pies. Nom. Do as you will.

Now. Bash up the cookies. Then pulverize the bashed up cookies in a food processor or, as I did, in your knock-off magic bullet. When you've got all of it turned into a fine dust, put it in a bowl and set aside.

Now, in a microwave safe bowl put the chocolate chips, the butter, and the sugar. Then, slowly in bursts, melt the mixture - stir repeatedly until it blends together. Pour this into the blended up cookies and stir it up. Once combined, lightly press the crust into the pie pan and then put it in the freezer while you work on the rest of the pie. This is so it sets.

Now, in a mixing bowl, mix together the grated lemon peel, the lemon juice, the creme fraiche, and the sweetened condensed milk until combined. Add in the raspberries and stir, being sure to smoosh them up with a spoon so that the pie filling is pink and the berries are in bits.

The original recipe has you use half the raspberries in the filling and then you scatter the rest over the pie. Feel free to do this.

Now, remove the pie crust from the freezer (I had in there about a half hour or so , because I am easily distracted) and pour in the filling. You'll want it to set properly, which is a suggested time of two hour. Mine was still a bit runny after that time (although delicious), so I let it go overnight. But maybe pop it in the freezer to speed it up. Or, of course, just a few hours are needed. I'm not sure.

Either way, this is delicious. The lemon gives it a wonderful ZING.