Easy Homemade Chocolate Pie

This homemade chocolate pie skips the pudding-mix shortcut and goes for the real thing: cocoa, sugar, flour, milk, and egg yolks cooked into a glossy chocolate custard, then poured into a baked pie shell to set in the fridge. Top it with billowy meringue or chilled whipped cream, your call.

The double boiler is doing the work here. It keeps the eggs from scrambling and the cocoa from scorching while the starch slowly thickens.

Pro Tips

• Whisk the dry ingredients well before adding milk. Cocoa loves to clump and the only way to chase out lumps is even distribution upfront.
• Temper the yolks. Once the milk mixture is warm, whisk a ladle of it into the yolks first, then return the lot to the pan. Adding cold yolks straight into the hot pan turns them into bits of scrambled egg.
• Cook until the filling visibly mounds on the back of a spoon. Underdone filling sets soupy in the pie shell.
• Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface while it chills. This stops a tough skin from forming on top.
• For meringue tops, spread the meringue while the filling is still warm and seal it to the crust edge so it doesn’t shrink and weep.

Variations

• Swap regular cocoa for Dutch-process for a deeper, less acidic chocolate flavor.
• Stir 2 ounces of chopped semisweet chocolate into the warm filling for a fudgier, double-chocolate version.
• Use butter in place of margarine for cleaner flavor.