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My Family’s Secret Chocolate Pie Recipe

5.00 Mitt(s) 6 Rating(s)6 votes, average: 5.00 out of 56 votes, average: 5.00 out of 56 votes, average: 5.00 out of 56 votes, average: 5.00 out of 56 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5

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Level: Easy

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Okay, so it’s not really a secret anymore if I share it here, is it? I’m not sure why I’ve been possessive of this recipe online before, but I’ve had a few people ask for it and my sister said to share it, so I’m sharing it.

But seriously? This is the best chocolate pie in the world!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups Evaporated Milk
  • 1 Tablespoon Butter
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla
  • 3 whole Egg Yolks
  • 1-½ cup Sugar
  • 4 Tablespoons Flour
  • 4-½ Tablespoons Hershey's Cocoa
  • ⅛ teaspoons Salt
  • 1 whole Pre-baked Pie Crust

Preparation

Combine the milk, butter, vanilla, and egg yolks together.

Combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, and salt together.
Sift the dry into the wet in a saucepan. Cook on medium-high heat until thick (this can sometimes take a long time).

Pour into a pre-baked pie crust.

This recipe doesn’t seem to make enough for a deep-dish pie, so I always triple the recipe and make two pies. You could always 1.5x the recipe too, or just use a regular pie dish, not a deep dish.

Also, I’m pretty sure the rationale behind just using egg yolks was so you could save the whites for meringue. Nobody in my family likes meringue, so I stopped making it a long time ago. Instead, when I triple the recipe, instead of using 9 egg yolks and tossing 9 egg whites, I just put in 5 whole eggs. Seems to work okay.

My Auntie never wrote this recipe down and was never quite sure how to tell someone else to do it. Every time she tried guessing, it came out different. She didn’t measure, but just knew. Her pies were always perfect. Ours, however, never were. Eventually my sister perfected the proportions. Here it is! But I don’t know what it is about the cocoa. I’ve tried several different kinds (Nestle and Girhardelli) and neither of them work in this recipe. It has to be Hershey’s.

Enjoy!

8 Comments

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Kelly Perkins on 1.13.2019

Quick question, is it salted or unsalted butter for this pie?

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lovinmy3boys on 11.20.2011

Hi, I’m not sure this is the difference, but a friend told me recently that Hershey’s uses semi-sweet chocolate not milk chocolate, so perhaps that is the difference between the other brands.

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halfpinthouse on 4.15.2011

Ooo! I never realized anyone had actually tried this! So happy you did!

Sorry I left out the “eat warm or chilled” – really either works, but we prefer it chilled.

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nicke on 11.13.2010

I made this for our pre-thanksgiving day dinner. It was heavenly! Perfectly delicious! This is now my new “go to” chocolate pie recipe. Thank YOU!

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sommerkorn on 4.15.2010

Yum! I am a total chocolate pie snob, and I give this recipe two thumbs up. The only thing I will do differently next time is use a touch less flour. It got too thick too fast, so the flour didn’t get cooked as much as I would have liked. I made 1 and 1/2 of the recipe to fill a large crust. Thanks halfpinthouse, this is a keeper!

6 Reviews

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pinkhiheels on 1.7.2015

This was absolutely delicious!! This will go in my keeper files. Thank you for a great chocolate pie.

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Bianca Horkan on 11.24.2012

Made this on Wednesday night to take with me to my SIL’s for Thanksgiving. I didn’t quite have 2 cups of condensed milk…so I added a little 2% milk and that was the only difference. Didn’t take too long to thicken up and it set wonderfully. The flavor was great — just tasted it before pouring into the pie crust (didn’t eat as it’s too rich for my current diet). It was a big hit with the family. I’d love to make this again — individual little pies.

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mamadee on 1.5.2012

My daughter made this for our Christmas party and it is absolutely delicious! I’ve always prided myself on my own recipe, but this tops mine hands down.

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amyloulou on 11.24.2011

This is an awesome pie. Super easy to prepare. Followed instructions to the letter. I topped it with homemade whipped cream. Took it to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving dinner…and let’s just say, I should have made two pies, instead of one.

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stina42 on 11.22.2010

Pretty dang good. I made it for my Pie Night party. So delicious, one of my favorites. I think cook time depends on the saucepan, mine didn’t take all that long and cooked pretty evenly, but I’m not as big a pie snob :)

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