Chocolate Abstract Meringue Pie - Triumph through tragedy

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My second biggest challenge in baking has to be meringue! Shocked?! I suppose you might be since meringues are .. well generally not that challenging to make. But Some how while making this pie which was pretty easy all the way through - the meringue got to me! It got to me BIG time! And that was only the beginning! Here's how everything played out yesterday:

14:00 ish - After lunch I started with the crust (Pate Brisse) while my mom was devaining the 10kg shrimps that my dad got!!! ( Any shrimp recipe - send them my way! :P) . So according to the recipe I turned the dough out of the food processor and turned into a disk and cling filmed it and then put it in the freezer for point five hours (Since the refrigerator was giving strong shrimp odors - as is my hair by the way!)

14:10 ish - Went to update my sony walkman mobile phone for my daily jog.

14:30 ish - Removed the dough from the freezer, rolled it out and it started breaking at this point so I picked it with the help of the rolling pin and fitted it in the pie dish with the help of me fingers, then returned it to the freezer so to firm it before blind baking it. At this point I decided to finish the pie after coming back from my jog.

17:30 on the dot - Leave the house with my gear intact ( gear includes: pouch for holding my sony walkman mobile phone, and tissue in case any allergies start to kick in - eew!, and my beloved nikes without which - well i wouldnt be able to jog)

18:30 -- 19:00- return home shower - yada yada - drink three glasses of water , pre heat oven, put patee brisee in the oven , make frothy hot chocolate with my magic whisk (the kind nigella has - I love it!)

19:00 ish - start the filling - everything is going smoothly I'm seriously happy and content and am humming peacefully to myself!

So eventually the pie gets filled with the chocolate creamy goo - yum yum and then the meringue ( da da da daa.. 'scary music on cue')

I start beating the egg whites till stiff - I'm beating with my electric hand held whisks (which are by some loser brand - a present from my cousin :) )

I'm beating on full speed ..

Then all of a sudden .. you guessed it... the frikin' peace of machinery stops! just like that! It stops working! And at this point i go into phase one of my hysteria where tears are slowly rolling down my cheeks and I'm calling for mommy who rushes to my aid and suggests that I may have over loaded the machine power or something like that!

So quickly I get my aunts electric beaters, and start beating away. I add the sugar, the vanilla and cocoa powder (a personal variation) . Then suddenly the whole meringue thingy turns into water!! And by water I don't literally mean water just liquid! So here I start sobbing hysterically! And calling for my aunt (who happens to be way better than martha - trust me! Although sadly she didn't opt to go main stream!). My aunt comes and with one look at the mess suggests that the meringue is now gone and i should move on to a fresh batch of whites. More tragedy follows when I discover we only have one egg in the fridge! So thus instead of a full on meringue thingy I have a Chocolate Abstract Meringue Pie!

The recipe is of Nigella's you can get it on her website: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/recipe.asp?article=636  - Its called a chocolate cream pie. 

and if you're wondering what happened to the failed meringue - I added the egg yolk from the last egg and baked into - and ended up with a mousse! Hence Triumph through tragedy!