If you’re a Reese’s cups fan, you know the seasonal shapes taste THE best. Specifically, the eggs, trees and hearts. Maybe it’s the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter, the softer outer chocolate shell (notice the bells don’t taste as good!), who knows, but they just taste better! After visiting us around Easter one year, the husband introduced my mom to the wonder of the egg shaped cups and she learned the secret as well.
For my mom’s 60th birthday, we thought she deserved her own custom Reese’s shape. Since she’s a math teacher, I thought a π shaped Reese’s would be perfect to wish her a Hap-pi Birthday–see what I did there?

I started googling to see if anyone had tips to make their own shapes and saw Miss Make’s rendition. After seeing proof it could be done, I immediately ordered my π cookie cutter.
I waited until the weekend before the big day to make her Reese’s. I was going to have to ship them, so I wanted to time it just right. I used this Buckeye’s recipe (with reviewer tip to use 3 cups of powdered sugar without sifting, only adding 1 cup at a time) and a lot of trial and error. LOTS of trial and error.
After attempting to dunk my pi’s with mediocre results and broken pieces,
(Chocolate Covered Carnage)
ruining my first batch of melted chocolate trying to thin it out (don’t add cream!),
(Seized chocolate)
and breaking most of my batch after peeling them off the wax paper,

(peanut butter carnage)
I learned a few lessons. There was so much disappointing but delicious failed attempts, the dogs eventually caught on by the third round of rolling out pi’s, and they were ready to help as the wax paper clean-up crew.

(note: no dog-cleaned wax paper was reused in the making of these pi’s or contained chocolate)
While my final result was 24 close-to-perfect Reese’s pi’s, I probably rolled out around 48 in total.

From pi’s breaking after taking them off the wax paper, to snapping “legs” off in the melted chocolate, to my chocolate not being runny enough, it took awhile to master my technique from start to finish.

Lessons Learned
- Carefully freeze your “naked” Reese’s. Since you’re going to be dipping your shape in hot gooey chocolate, it’s better if it’s a little frozen so it doesn’t immediately lose form; however, my pi’s started getting stuck to the wax paper and breaking when I pulled them off. To avoid this, simply use a spatula (or your hands) to lift the shape and move it over shortly after you first rest it on the wax so it doesn’t stick.
- Get your chocolate as runny as possible. After breaking the “legs” off several pi’s and making my chocolate “seize” from throwing in some heavy cream, I googled and googled and googled trying to find the secret to the runniest, dippable chocolate. I couldn’t get my pi’s in and out of the chocolate fast enough without either losing it in the bowl of chocolate, or a pi “leg” breaking off from the heat and weight of the melted chocolate. I used shortening per Miss Make, but it still didn’t seem runny enough. I consulted the chocolate experts and saw their ratio of shortening was higher. I also used Hershey’s chips in the first batch and switched to Ghiradelli from there on. The magic might have been a mix of both.
- Don’t dunk. Depending on your shape, you may be able to just roll it around in the chocolate like a buckeye. But if your shape is more delicate, just spread the chocolate! Even after getting the melted chocolate as perfect of a consistency as seemed possible, the pi’s were impossible to dunk in and out of the chocolate and survive. I again returned to the Internet for tips, searching this time to see how bakers perfectly ice cookies. This lesson saved the
day weekend for me. I found the only successful way to coat my pi’s, was to hold them over the melted chocolate on a serving fork, spoon the chocolate over the top, then quickly spread it out with the back of a large spoon. The backs had to stay “naked”, but after several failed attempts, this worked for me!
- Reuse your peanut butter carnage. This is a really obvious one, but I guess I was so consumed in cranking them out, it was somewhat of an Oprah “ah ha” moment for me. Yes that big. After making 3 batches of buckeyes and rolling out pi’s, I was pretty frustrated to have finally mastered the technique, and only have 12 good pi’s to send my mom. I knew my dad was meeting her at school for a surprise party with the math department, so there was no way I would be happy with not being able to send enough to have one per math teacher (plus of course mom would want extras to take home). While taking a breather to walk the dogs, I realized, duh, just let the mound of peanut butter pi carnage return to room temperature, and roll it out again. Doh!
- Dump the leftover chocolate. When you’re ready to clean up, it’s easier to dump out any leftover chocolate before adding soap and water. After a couple of wasted batches of chocolate, I became much more efficient at cleaning my double boiler. Once you’ve scraped off as much wet chocolate as you can, then add hot water to keep it from immediately seizing into a hard mess.
The fun part came when it was time to package them all up. Originally I intended to individually wrap each one just like a real seasonal Reese’s, but due to the large size of each pi, I decided this would be too bulky and potentially a chocolate mess. I found a shoe box and covered the inside with freezer paper (to help keep it cold during shipping and feel a little more sanitary). I printed my custom wrapper I designed and covered the lid of the box, leaving flaps on the edge to create the zig-zag tears.
(*Actual size compared to 14 pound dog)
For each layer, I covered a piece of cardboard in mini versions of the design to make it appear like individually wrapped pi’s and help keep the safe during shipping.

Amazingly, the pi’s almost all arrived without breaking or melting and in one pi-ece. My dad even followed my one-page instructions (his coworkers must think I’m insane) about how to carefully unpack the box and bring them to the party.

(The birthday girl with her Reese’s Pi–shipped all the way from NYC to OKC!)
Now I’m looking forward to trying this again with a new shape now that I have my technique down! What shape would you make if you created your own Reese’s? Or if Reese’s added a new seasonal shape, what should it be? The gap between Easter Egg Reese’s and Halloween Pumpkins is far too long!