PIE IN THE SKY

How do you make something that is already amazingly sweet and simple even better? You turn it into pie.

The tools needed.

Let me explain.

As The Husband mentioned yesterday, we celebrated his birthday last night with singing, gifts and the best darn ice cream ever made - Graham Central Station. (A lovely graham flavored ice cream with bits of graham cracker and chocolate honeycomb pieces nestled within.) I'll back up a little and explain our love of this ice cream for those who don't already know. It is delightful! It is delicious! It is wake-up-and-want-it-for-breakfast good. So good that our family is unofficially leading the campaign to have it stay as a permanent flavor at Newport Creamery.

It was a no-brainer that we'd celebrate The Husband's birthday with this ice cream. I wanted to make it extra special though. So, I set out to create Graham Central Station ice cream pie. The plan was brilliant! A chocolate crumb crust filled with GCS ice cream, topped with a marshmallow coating and dusted with cocoa. I wanted to cry just thinking about it.

The Little One helped spread the goo.

With the Little One by my side to assist me (well, seated in a bouncy seat on the floor), we set out building our masterpiece for Daddy. Everything was going great until the melting of the marshmallows. I over-estimated the number I'd need to top the pie and melted half a bag into an overflowing cloud of sticky goo. Spreading it was no easy task as well. I started to get concerned when I had to shake the spoon I was using out of my hand.

Fluff! I should have used marshmallow Fluff! Soft, spreadable Fluff was what I needed at that moment. Melted marshmallow does not solidify back into the soft puff it once was. I set out to enhance the ice cream. Instead, I managed to create a crunchy marshmallow shield that kept me from getting to the ice cream.

In the end though, the pie was a success. A culinary success? Not even close. It was a success because we were together and we laughed. This was not what I set out to do for The Husband's birthday, but I could not ask for more.