Inspiration comes from the most unlikely places and situations.
At Thanksgiving this year, conversation turned to pie (no, not a literal Conversation Pie) and my mother-in-law responded to a question about favorite pies, answering that she likes all pies but what she most likes is crust. She went on to say she likes it so much she wishes there was an all-crust pie.
Thus the seed was planted in my brain, and questionable fruit grew forth.
I now had a quest in mind: to defy nature, the human palate and possibly a couple of laws in order to create the first all-crust pie.
Now, the first hurdle in the architecture of this dessert was foundation. I immediately ruled out baking a solid 1 1/2” thick crust, as that did not sound appealing. Instead, I quickly settled on layers of pre-baked crusts.
Unfortunately, layers of crust without some sort of mortar between them would result in a pie tin full of broken crust bits. So, something had to be used as a buffer between crusts and that’s when I settled on Cool Whip. Then my mind turned to flavoring these layers of whipped cream, and I decided that each layer would be different, albeit complimentary, flavor.
A trip to two grocery stores resulted in the purchase of vanilla, almond and strawberry extracts, as well as graham, chocolate graham, shortbread and pecan pre-baked pie crusts.
The shortbreak crust appeared to be the most stable, so I used that as the bottom crust. I then added a thin layer of flavored Cool Whip. For there, I simply alternated layers of pie shell and flavored whipped topping.
The addition of crust layers was the most difficult aspect of this endeavor and I’m still not certain what the best technique might be. Given pie crust flare outwards as they go upwards, I could see I wouldn’t be using the entire crust for each layer. Instead, my goal was to use as much of the round crust base as possible, and fill in gaps around the side with broken pieces. I thought I would be able to keep those bases intact; however, I don’t recall I was able to do that with any of them, and I ended up mushing them together as best I could. In one especially bad move, I tried upending a crust as fast as possible, and only succeeded in dispersing crust shrapnel a considerable distance.
Once I had reached the level of the top of the foundation crust layer, I topped the pie with Cool Whip with dark chocolate cocoa powder mixed in. The final finishing touch was a showering of pulverized remainders from the various crusts.
To my considerable surprise, the dessert was a success; however, this was the most excessively sweet dessert I have ever consumed. If I ever make this again, I will remember to slice it into smaller increments than six pieces. About halfway through eating a single slice of this, my teeth were screaming and I could taste sounds. I felt vaguely nauseous for the rest of the day.
For now, I am going to call this concoction Nausea Pie, though I may stick with my initial thought: Instant Diabetes.