Snow Ghost Pie

Our first big snow of the season!  It's deep and it's beautiful.  The news keeps reporting this as a record snowfall for our area for this time of year.  It's expected to be our first White Christmas in 20 years here.  Most of my Christmas shopping is done, cookies are baked, cards have been mailed and the tree is going to be decorated tomorrow.  It looks like the roads will be cleared enough for our family to make it home by the end of the week.

                                                          

With all that snow outside my window and a warm fire in the woodstove, I decided I'd better make our annual Snow Ghost pie today.  An old Hershey Chocolate advertisement told a story of the Snow Ghost.  It claimed you must make a snow ghost pie when you get the first real snow of the season and you have to leave a piece in a snow bank for the Snow Ghost.  If you do, he will bring more snow.  When my children were little we made a snow ghost pie every winter. Sometimes we were so busy we just mixed up chocolate pudding and put it in a pie shell, but we made sure we put a piece in a snowbank for the ghost. (Be careful  not to leave it where a passing dog can find it and eat the chocolate and get sick.)  I make my own crust sometimes, but today I used a premade Mrs. Smith's deep dish crust that I baked.  If you like chocolate pie, this is a really good one and makes plenty of filling--I had some extra that I ate while it was hot!  Yummmm. . . .

SNOW GHOST PIE

1 9-inch baked pastry shell

1/2 cup Hershey's Cocoa

1-1/4 cups sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/4 tsp. salt

3 cups milk

3 Tblsp. butter

1-1/2 tsp. vanilla

Sweetened whipped cream

Combine cocoa, sugar, salt and cornstarch in a medium saucepan.  Gradually blend milk into dry ingredients, stirring until smooth.   Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until filling boils; boil 1 minute.  Remove from heat; blend in butter and vanilla.  Pout into pie crust.  Carefully press plastic wrap directly onto pie filling.  Cool.  Chill 3 to 4 hours.  Garnish with whipped cream.

It's late--I'm the only one still awake--the woodstove is warm with a crackling fire.  I'm going to make myself a hot cup of tea and have just one more piece of that pie and look for a Christmas movie on tv.