Arkansas. No playing possum here.

It isn’t what you think!!

Arkansas’ name comes from the Native American word akakaze, which means “land of the downriver people.” Arkansas is most well known for its beautiful lakes, rivers, and hot springs, which earned it the nickname the Nature State. Speaking of beauty, Arkansas is the only U.S. state that produces diamonds. And let me tell you, this was a real diamond of a state to bake.

We had several different options to choose from for dinner, including fried catfish, hushpuppies, and fried pickles. But after taking our usual poll, we decided on possum pie. Possum pie is not made with opposum, as the name suggests, but is rather a rich chocolate pudding pie. Its’ name comes from the term “playing possum”, which means that someone or something looks or acts like one thing but is actually another. The pie is “playing possum”, because it looks like a pecan pie from the outside, but is actually a chocolate pie on the inside. Even though dessert for dinner sounds awesome, we decided we needed to serve it with a meal so we chose French dip sandwiches from our list of Arkansas options.

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Pie layers: ASSEMBLE

We started out making the pie crust by mixing together our dries, then our wets, and ended up with a nice pie crust. It was your typical pie crust but had pecans made into it. Then we dumped the soon-to-be-crust into the pie pan and shaped it to the shape of the pan, which was kind of fun, to be honest, and put it into the oven to bake for a while.

When the crust came out of the oven, it needed to cool for half an hour. While we waited, we worked on the cream cheese and chocolate pudding layers. First, we mixed cream cheese, powered sugar, and cream to complete Layer Number One. Next, we whipped together some milk, corn starch, and chocolate powder and “cooked” it on the stovetop for around twelve minutes. We pulled it off the heat and gave it about 5 minutes to cool down; it really thickened up into a nice chocolate pudding to compete Layer Number Two.

Once both the pudding and crust had cooled sufficiently, we started layering our possum pie. First, we took the cream cheese layer and dumped it into the crust, then smoothed it out to make it more evenly distributed. We then spread the pudding on top of this layer. We had to be careful about this because if we got too low into the cream cheese or pushed the pudding too hard the layers would get messed up which is not exactly what you want to have to happen when making a pie. When the pudding was in and smoothed out, we covered it with plastic wrap to prevent skin from forming and placed it in the fridge.

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Blood, sweat, and tears went into this. Really.

Next up was the French dips. We started by seasoning the beef. Then we took it and flipped it onto a pre-warmed frying pan on the stovetop with the already seasoned side down, and salt and peppered the other side. We were told to “brown the sides”, which only took a minute or two per side. Once the meat was done browning we set the crockpot to a six-hour roast, put the meat in, and left it until supper, basically.

When it was time for dinner, I took the meat out and started to shred it with Dad’s plastic bear claw things. After Mom sautéed some onions, she took some of the juice out of the crockpot to make into an au jus. I was shredding the meat while Mom was making the au jus when Mom burned her tongue while trying to see if the flavor was good. This caused a minor break in our cooking process as Mom held an ice cube in her mouth to cool her tongue.

And just after, disaster struck again. When I got back to shredding and Mom started cutting the buns to use for the sandwiches, Mom accidentally cut her finger with the bread knife. This really put a real stop to our process. Mom was nursing her finger and Dad was at our local grocery store getting Steri-strips, so that left me to finish the meat. The au jus was finished by that point thankfully so all I had to do was finish shredding the meat, top the buns with cheese, broil them, and plate and serve them.

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Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.

The French Dips were awesome! The meat and onions worked together excellently, and the Hawaiian buns we got for the meal added a great sweetness to the sandwiches. They were even better when dipped in the au jus Mom had made earlier.

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The colors do make it look like an opossum.

After supper, I whipped some cream and added the final layer to the possum pie. The possum pie was excellent, and the whipped cream, chocolate pudding, and pecan crust worked together really well. I really like the color contrast of all the different layers. It was kind of tricky to eat though because the crust liked to separate out from the filling. But all in all, even with the incidents that occurred throughout this States on My Plate, I really enjoyed making the French dips and can’t wait till the next time we make them.