As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I like to buy a cook book whenever I visit an area. The cook book I bought in Tucson had many very good dessert recipes. So when pie day came along, I decided to try one of them.

The recipe I decided to try was the Very Rich Fudge Pie, which was the contribution of Patsy Frannea. The recipe is well titled, as the pie came out very, very rich. I could only eat a small portion of it in one sitting. It would go very well with ice cream, which would cut the richness. If you really wanted to be decadent, you could put a peanut butter pie layer on top.

I do want to make a couple of comments on the recipe. The first is about the crust. In the past, I’ve had problems baking a filling in a shell type pie (such as cream pies). The crust usually comes out too crisp and lacking in flavor. This crust was much better. I credit that to the amount of fat in it, which is more than I normally use. I typically use 1 cup for 2 1/2 cups flour ; this one used 1/2 cup for 1 1/2 cups flour, which is somewhat more. That made a difference.

Second comment: the recipe first called for “beating” the eggs with the sugar, and then had the rest of the ingredients mixed in. Had i read it a bit more carefully, I would have realized that I needed to really whip the egg mixture up, probably to a soft peak stage, and then fold the rest of the ingredients in (chocolate melted with butter plus some flour. It also called for some walnuts, but I omitted those). Without the whipping the resulting mixture was a little liquidly and, more importantly, the pie took quite a bit longer than the recipe called for to cook. The pie still came out very well, but was quite dense.

I was happy with the way the pie came out, despite my mistakes. I would certainly make it again.