Thanks Ginger. I won't bother with the tabasco sauce, but I'll give it a try.

I am home and don't have to be back to work till Monday. Yay!!!

Christmas comes early this year.

Remember how I said it felt like my wishes were coming true back at the start of the month? I'm going home to wait for Ben Browder to show up with a bottle of wine.

After all the fast food talk this afternoon, I split the difference and got pizza for dinner. Such a good call!

Since I'm making this as one of the desserts for Thanksgiving, I figured I'd post the recipe here.

Chocolate Coma Pie

1 14oz. can Eagle Sweetened Condensed milk
3 egg yolks
1 Cup heavy whipping cream
1 prepared pie crust of your choice (I like the Nilla Wafer crust, but I've also made a crust out of crushed ginger wafers that rocks da house)
2 3- 3.5 oz. bars of good dark chocolate, like Valrhona or Cote d'Or. Ghirardelli is probably the easiest to find and works really well.
1/4 cup of semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

Whipped cream

Flavored liqueur (opt.)

Preheat oven to 350F

Break chocolate bars into pieces and place in heatproof bowl along with chocolate chips. In small saucepan over medium heat, bring heavy cream to a scald (very hot w/small bubbles along the edges, just shy of a boil); pour over chocolate and let sit for several minutes. In large bowl, mix egg yolks and condensed milk together. Using a whisk, mix cream/chocolate mixture until smooth with a satiny gloss finish. Combine ganache with egg/condensed milk mixture until smooth. At this point, if you want to add a shot of liqueur for extra flavor, this is a good time. Frangelico or Bailey's works really well. IJS...

Pour mixture into prepared pie shell, bake in oven 20-25 minutes, until center is set. Let cool on a rack, then chill in refrigerator. The longer this pie chills, the more fudgy the texture. Serve with soft whipped cream or ice cream. Collapse into a stupor. This is an extremely rich pie. A typical 8 serving pie crust will yield closer to 12-16 servings. You can also play with the chocolates, in terms of intensity or flavor. A favorite variations uses one bar of Valrhona 61% Chocolate/Orange and one bar of the 71% Cocoa and Grand Marnier to enhance the orange flavor.

Oh, man, Barb, I think I went into a coma just reading that recipe.

Does the alcohol cook out completely, or does the pie still have a bit of kick when it's done? My grandfather's girlfriend used to make a vaguely similar-sounding chocolate mint cream deathbomb pie (with Oreo crust) that had a distinct creme de menthe buzz to it.

IOW, this pie sounds incredible but if I made it there'd be children eating it (hell, it's chocolate; we'd have to fight them off to get any) and I'm wary of proceeding with pie plannage unless I can feel reasonably certain of not creating wee drunkards.

I'm fairly certain most of the alcohol cooks off, leaving just behind the flavor, but if you're worried about it, use an extract or oil to punch up the flavor instead. I think I did that a few years ago-- used pure orange oil, along with the dark chocolate w/orange and it was NUMMY.

JZ, you can find N/A Creme de Menthe. However, my parents saw no problem with allowing me one piece of boozy cheesecake - I guess they figured that that little amount of alcohol was acceptable? (My mom's Grasshopper Cheesecake is the shiznit.)

I guess they figured that that little amount of alcohol was acceptable

And look how that turned out.

Shut it, you.