Gather all your ingredients and equipment

Since we won't be baking our pie filling, we need to bake our crust with no filling. This is called blind baking. Roll out your pie dough to slightly larger than your pie pan. If using a store bought crust, they've already done this for you

transfer dough to your pie pan .

trim edges, or (I prefer to) tuck any hanging over edges back inside the dough to form a rounded edge

shape the edges of your pie crust.

Dock. line, and fill your crust with something to weigh it down. I used lentils, but you could use rice or any kind of bean or actual pie weights

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes and then remove pie weights. Continue cooking for 20-30 minutes or until pie crust is lightly browned and cooked through.

Pour 3 cups of milk into a heavy bottomed sauce pan and slowly heat over medium heat. We want to catch it just before it boils and turn the heat off. You may want to occasionally stir the milk so that it heats more evenly and doesn't burn on the bottom.

Add the remaining sugar into the milk as it heats. Give it a quick stir to help it dissolve.

When your milk is almost ready, you'll notice it get bubbly and foamy on top. Turn off the heat completely.

Next, we're going to add our egg yolk and cornstarch mixture to the milk to thicken it, but we don't want to just dump them in or the yolks will scramble, so we are going to temper our egg yolks in. This means adding just a little bit of hot liquid while stirring to the yolks at a time until they are as hot as the milk.

Bonnie does an absolutely terrible job of helping me, but she's 3, so we'll give her a break. Here's what the process SHOULD look like. It is best if you have someone to ladle and someone to stir. For our recipe, you only need to ladle in about 2 or 3 ladles full and then you can pour the egg mixture to the pot whisking constantly as you pour.

Now you've made a base, you could put in any flavorings or extracts at this time, for our chocolate pie, we'll add.

• 7 ounces chocolate chopped - all I had in the house were semisweet chocolate chips, and my pie still turned out tasty

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

stir with a silicone spatula until all of the flavorings are completely dissolved and no white streaks remain

Pour your filling through a mesh strainer and into your baked pie shell. The strainer helps you catch any bits that may have burned or scrambled during the cooking process. No one wants a lumpy pie!

If you end up with more filling than will fit in your pie, you can put the excess in a small bowl or cup and you have a home made pudding cup.

Refrigerate your pie for several hours or overnight so that it will set and become sliceable

Because we had some that I wanted to use up, I topped my pie with cool whip piped through a piping tip, but you could also make whipped cream from scratch. It's very easy to make. Here's a recipe from Alton Brown

just look at that clean slice!