Chocolate Bar Pie is a simple recipe. All you need to make it is two basic ingredients along with water, a pinch of salt and the pie shell of your choice. Still it is a crowd pleaser. Aunt Hen recognized the value of such a recipe. Classically light and sweet, it is easy to make, easy to enjoy and still made her guests feel special.

Aunt Hen's Chocolate Bar Pie topped with chocolate curls beside vintage apron.

Reading Cookbooks

Aunt Hen was a lifelong reader. The books she read filled bookshelves along the walls of several rooms in her house. More books were stacked beside her chair and bed. As early as I can remember she belonged to several mail order book clubs. She often sat at her dining room table looking over catalogs as she decided which books she wanted to buy that month.

When the box arrived by mail, she looked forward to opening it. Again she would sit at the table and carefully cut through the wrapping. Then she took the books from their box and looked through her selections with anticipation. Her favorite genres were Christian Fiction and Cookbooks. She read them much the same. Aunt Hen would read a cookbook like a novel, page by page.

Aunt Hen was also a writer of sorts. Around the time I got married, Aunt Hen began to collect recipes in bound journals with the words “Favorite Recipes” in gold on the front cover. There she wrote out recipes that she liked in her own tidy handwriting. Some of the recipes may have been original. Others were credited to the source of the recipe, often a friend whose name I would recognize. After she wrote them out, she numbered the pages and indexed the recipes in the back of the book.

A slice of Aunt Hen's Chocolate Bar Pie topped with whipped cream and chocolate flecks on a white dessert plate.

Aunt Hen’s “Favorite Recipes”

Decades later I am still enjoying Aunt Hen’s cookbooks. Among those passed down to me are slick Southern Living cookbooks, spiral bound community cookbooks and special interest pamphlet cookbooks. The collection also includes three of Aunt Hen’s “Favorite Recipes” books that I keep on a shelf near my kitchen. They contain recipes for everything from down-home favorites to unlikely salads and casseroles to a wide variety of interesting cakes and pies.

Aunt Hen liked her homemade cookbooks and, as a wedding gift, she wanted me to have one too. She promised to start it for me, writing out some of the recipes we had made together and others she knew I liked. Then she gave it to me so that I could add favorites of my own.

Today I have been thinking of Aunt Hen and looking through her legacy of cookbooks. It is her birthday. If Aunt Hen were still with us she would be one hundred years old today. I thought of making a cake for her birthday but, while I remember birthday cakes she made for me, I cannot remember any that were her personal favorites.

A Chocolate Bar Pie to Celebrate One Hundred Years

More often I remember the way she enjoyed special pies. I remember Aunt Hen’s Chocolate Angel Pie, her Cherry Cheese Pie, Aunt Hen’s “Brownie” Pie and Lemon Meringue Pie topped with her favorite recipe for “No Weep” Meringue. All of those recipes are posted at My Own Sweet Thyme. But there is another pie I first learned to make with Aunt Hen. Near the front of my “Favorite Recipes” book is a childhood favorite from Aunt Hen’s kitchen, Chocolate Bar Pie.

Chocolate Bar Pie is a simple recipe. All you need to make it is two basic ingredients along with water, a pinch of salt and the pie shell of your choice. Still it is a crowd pleaser. Nearly everyone of every age likes chocolate and that’s nearly all there is to it. Aunt Hen recognized the value of such a recipe. Classically light and sweet, it is easy to make, easy to enjoy and still made her guests feel special. I think she would enjoy a bite as much as I would. Happy Birthday, Aunt Hen!