Kool Aid Pie

Today would have been my dad's 95th birthday, so in celebration I give you a story I wrote about something he loved:

Kool Aid Pie. It sounds so simple, and yet it’s not. It’s a long, complicated process. There’s only four ingredients:

2/3 cup sugar, 1 can evaporated milk, 1 packet of Kool Aid, and 1 graham cracker crust.

Simple right? But it was never simple. First of all, there was never any Kool Aid to be found. We were relegated to Flav-or-Aid, drink of choice for those who wish to commit mass suicide. While they were partial to grape Flav-or-Aid, I had a choice between lemon lime and orange. I don’t know how they did it, but my parents would buy it in variety packs, yet we only ever had the green or the orange. It was uncanny. My first Kool Aid Pie was orange.

Next came the evaporated milk – which was nothing more than a waiting game. You open up the can, pour it into a bowl, stick it into the freezer, and wait. As a little kid, “wait” means what happens between commercial breaks, but it takes longer than that to “partially freeze”, and every time you open the freezer to check on it, you let the cold out and prolong the process further. Eventually, you grow frustrated with the whole process and forget about it. After an hour or so, you remember, and rush to the freezer to find your milk completely iced over on top. A little longer and you would have had to start all over again, but as it is, the milk is perfect for working.

You take your bowl over to the counter, plug in the ancient green blender that only has one speed because your mom loaned it out once in the seventies to someone who decided they would use it to make cookie dough with and burnt up the speed control. You start to whip your semi-frozen evaporated milk until it turns into white foam. Then, you slowly add the sugar. Slowly. That was always hard for me. I am not a patient person; I always wanted to dump it all in at once. You can’t though, it’ll pull all the air out and make your pie hard. I learned this the hard way.

Once all the sugar is added, and you have what is referred to in cooking as “soft, white peaks”, you add in your Flav-or-Aid packet until it is completely distributed. Then, you pour it all into a pie shell and freeze it. When the time arrives for dessert, you will have a frozen pie that when sliced, is soft and creamy.

I made a “Kool-Aid” pie every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas and every year, my dad was the only one who ate it.

I could have made this very one. Source