Chocolate Cream Pie

One of the books in the prize bag from the pie contest was a tiny little book called, "The Lost Art of Pie Making Made Easy".

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It's a really fascinating book. Not only is it a cookbook, but it gives a little background in the realm of pies in the United States. One thing it mentioned in the book was that back in the 1920's, there was a Kentucky superstition that if a woman ate the tip of the pie first, she would be destined to be an old maid. Hey, I believe it.

But in my quest to further my baking technique, I decided to try one of the pies they have in it: Chocolate Cream Pie. OOooOOooOoooooo....

Ingredients Listed For Filling:
2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1tsp vanilla
1tbs butter
3 baking chocolate squares
(oh by the way, if you're going to follow this recipe, I'd advise you read whole entry first)

Let's start with the crust. I decided to use a Nilla Wafer Crust with this one. I'd figure it would go best with flavor of the chocolate cream. It needs 1 1/2 cup ground up with 3/4 stick of melted unsalted butter, and 2 tbs of sugar.

Nilla Wafers being grinded

End Result

Butter and sugar mixed and put into a pie pan

For the filling: Heat the milk in a double boiler. Mix the flour and sugar together and whisk into the milk. You'll start to see it thicken up a bit. Once if gets a bit thick, take a half cup of the milk mixture and whisk in the eggs yolks. Then add that back to the rest of the mixture.

Once it get really thick (like pudding) take it off the heat and add the vanilla, butter, and chocolate. And you'll get something like this.

I let it rest for a little bit put into the pie crust.

Finally the whipped cream. I've done this about a million times for I can practically do it with my eyes closed now. But since I don't have a hand mixer, I'm always screwed using only a whisk. And trust me, it freaking sucks....

But basically, I use 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1tbs of vanilla, 1tbs of sugar (powdered sugar is best). Start with whisking the cream in a chilled bowl. As whisk like no tomorrow. It might feel like you're doing absolutely nothing, and you'd want the world to end for the first 5 minutes but it will thickened up eventually. If you have stiff peaks (or as soon as you can hold the bowl upside down without the cream falling out), add the vanilla and sugar. And Bam! Whipped Cream! I then added to the pie.



Looks pretty good huh?

The verdict? It's not bad! The crust came out great, as did the whipped cream. I would have tweaked the filling recipe a bit though. Next time I'm going to drop the sugar down to 3/4 cup. Also, I think I left it on the burner a little too long. It got a bit too thick and it wasn't as creamy in the end as I would have hoped. But all in all, not bad for first try! Sure does look good in the picture right?