I’ll start today’s entry with this precious set of “Turtle Doves” that my 13-year-old drew especially for today. Love that kid!

If you’d like to know some fun holiday trivia, I found this link that gives one interesting viewpoint about the symbolism of the beloved Christmas carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas.

http://www.brownielocks.com/twelvedaysofchristmas.html

I found it all pretty cool–I especially loved the part about turtle doves and how they “mate for life.” I, for one, am a huge fan of this romantic notion, and I fully intend to keep the bird I’ve got till we both fly the coop, so to speak.

Anyway, today I made a Turtle Pie using a recipe by Emeril. In my opinion, he’s always been more of a chef than a baker, so I was relieved when I found his recipe pretty easy to follow.

But what is it with these Food Network types where they’ve gotta be whippin’ cream all the time. Really? Four cups of heavy whipping cream? Geeeez….

I’m all for giving a guy a chance, so I whipped. And whipped. And whipped for about 7 minutes with the mixer. Whew. Doesn’t anyone believe in Cool Whip anymore? I was whipped from all that whippin’.

Anyhoo, I put that cream in the fridge (I’d added sugar and vanilla to yum it up a bit) and got busy on the pie. I used a store-bought graham cracker crust. The recipe said to bake it for five minutes first, so I did.

Next, I mixed up the following for the filling: cream cheese, peanut butter, peanuts, confectioners sugar, and half of that super WHIPPED cream. I had to fold in the cream, because if you don’t, it goes flat.

I dumped all of that deliciousness into the graham cracker crust and zig-zagged some Hershey’s syrup on the top. OK, so Emeril doesn’t use Hershey’s syrup, but I’d already whipped for him, so don’t judge me.

Lastly, I used my favorite pastry bag (small Ziploc bag with a corner cut off) to pipe on more of that whippety-do-dah cream I had. Lemme tell you something–

4 CUPS OF HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM MAKES A LOT OF CREAM.

I seriously could flock all of the bushes in my front flower bed with this stuff.

The end result was this gorgeous looking pie. The number two was in honor of the second day of the 12 Pies of Christmas.

My kids and I tried a slice this evening. It was VERY rich and VERY delicious. I think the slice might look better after it chills overnight, but here’s how it looked after an hour and a half. A yummy success was declared by all. It stuffed us, every one!