Birthday

Y’all, my little boy turned 2. TWO. I honestly don’t know how it happened so quickly, but it seems like overnight he went from a little lump of smushy skin and teeny hands to a big, active boy who loves trains and trucks and playing in mud puddles.

I REALLY like birthdays, LOVE birthdays. Have always made a HUGE deal about other people’s. After my little was born I realized that birthdays are even MORE special. I mean, giving birth to the person being celebrated maybe changed my perspective a little bit. I mean, I’d kind of been thinking for several years that for bringing me into the world my mama ought to be the one to get the cake and presents on my birthday, but now I just feel like Wagner’s birthday is also special because it’s the day I went from being plain old Biz into being Biz, an honest to goodness MOTHER. Anyway, for all those reasons it seems to me like February 25th deserves to be celebrated a whole week.

We had a party the Saturday after Wagner’s birthday with a transportation theme and 7 little friends from his Kindermusik class. Since we’re pretty new in town still, it was fun for me to see the mamas that I only sort-of know outside of a crazy hour-long sing along, and it was REALLY fun for Wagner to play with his buddies and eat all of his favorite foods.

…

I turned twenty nine on Saturday (yikes!), and when my mama asked my what kind of birthday cake I wanted, I told her that I’d rather have a Tollhouse Pie like the one from one of my favorite Atlanta restaurants, Murphy’s. sure, there are “traditionally” southern establishments in ATL, but it IS in atlanta, and has been around for an unusually long time (I ate there with my debate team in high school, on my first Atlanta apartment hunting trip with my mom, and then again on an early date with boone), plus, it’s just delicious. Murphy’s is in my fave ATL neighborhood, the highlands, and is super close to the teeny basement apartment where boone proposed…and their tollhouse pie is. the. bomb. dot. com.

i know it was my own birthday dessert, but mama let me help with the baking since I love doing it but always feel like i need a really good reason to put so much labor and love into something so unhealthy. regardless, we had a great time baking–and then eating– that pie. read on for the recipe.

What you need:

For the Oreo Crust:

7/8 Cup (7 oz) fine Oreo crumbs

1/4 Cup chopped walnuts

1/4 Cup Salted (or unsalted, but salted works fine) Butter

For the Filling:
1 Cup Light brown sugar (had dark brown, and it works just fine)
6 tablespoons (3 oz) Granulated sugar
3/4 Cup (6 oz) Bread flour
4 eggs (the recipe doesn’t say, but I figure this is 4 med or 3 large)

5/8 Cup (5 oz) butter
5/8 Cup (5 oz)Chocolate chips
5/8 Cup (5 oz)White chips
5/8 Cup (5 oz) chopped Walnut pieces
we added 1/4 tsp of vanilla

What to do:
To make the crust, crush the oreo cookies without the cream into a fine powder using a food processor, (or better yet, use the pre-crushed oreo crumbs) Melt the butter and with the crumbs and nuts. Press into a 10” pie tin. Cool until hard.

Blend together with the paddle part of your mixer the brown and granulated sugar and the flour.

Add in the eggs, and then melt the butter for the filling and cool to room temperature and pour it into the mixture. (this keeps the butter from scrambling the eggs, I figure). Mix the chips and walnuts into the batter slowly until blended.

so, so, so delicious.

Pour the batter into the prepared crust; bake at 250 degrees for 90 – 110 minutes until the crust is light brown. Let it cool completely before serving if you want it to be firm and cut cleanly. I honestly couldn’t wait because i wanted warm pie so badly…I ended up with un-perfect slices. oh well. it didn’t taste un-perfect.

note on my photos: although my mama was 100% against my help on my own cake, my really good reason was the NEW camera boone gave me….it had to charge for most of the baking, but the last few photos were taken with it. i’m smitten with how sexy the photos turned out and with my wonderful honey who knew EXACTLY what I wanted. 😉 it’s A-mazing what the right tools can do.

Footer