Date I made this recipe:
March 14, 2015 (3/14/15—Pi Day!)
The Artful Pie –
Unforgettable Recipes for Creative Cooks by Lisa Cherkasky and Renee Comet
Published by:
Chapters Publishing Ltd.
ISBN: 1-57630-022-6
Recipe: Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie – p. 74-75
(Art: Doris Keil-Shamieh, Jefferson ,
Maryland
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy – it's Pi Day! "Pi," not to
be confused with "pie," is the mathematical calculation of 3.14159
etc. etc. etc. So last year, we all
celebrated "Pi" day on 3/14/14.
This year, we get to do it again on 3/14/15. I'll be curious to see if we round up next
year so as to sneak in one more celebration on 3/14/16 (3.14159 rounded up to
3.1416).
So naturally, I had to make a pie, right? And yet finding just "the right"
pie was not, as the saying goes, as easy as pie.
For starters, I almost killed myself pulling Rose Levy
Beranbaum's, The Pie and Pastry Bible,
off my top shelf. That was one heavy
book that set the entire bunch of books next to it tumbling. This book is signed by Rose, who I've met,
and is a wonderful book but all my favorite pie recipes in this tome were more
autumnal and so I made a mental note to check back in closer to Thanksgiving.
This left a few more books, one of which was this one – The Artful Pie. This book is fun because various artists
contributed the artwork that lines the pages (and serves as a very fun
backdrop/placemat for the featured pies).
The art is very fun and definitely appealed to my husband who is both
the "pie guy" in our house – both for eating and making the pies –
and an art aficionado. (He also rocks at math so he's got a lock-n-load on the
whole "pi" thing.). Anyway, this
time around, I thought I'd give my pie guy a break and make the pie
myself. Translated, this means "no
complicated recipes, the likes of which my guy likes to tackle." He may be the pie guy but I'm the one making
it and posting it to my blog so it had to be good.
Okay, so now that I had selected the book, it was time to
select the appropriate (read: easy)
recipe. When I pulled this book off the
shelf (without casualties), I noticed several post-it notes on various pages so
either Andy or I or maybe both considered using this book in the past. But this time through, none of the
previously-selected recipes did anything for me. So time to start over.
As with Beranbaum's book, several of the pies were either
too summery (and while we're warming up, we're not there yet) or too
wintry. And so out of the list of 36
pies, I came up with four potential candidates, all of which were relatively
simple to make: "Maple Sugar and
Cream Pie" – p. 32; "Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie" – p. 72;
"Ricotta Nut Crunch Pie" – p. 104 and "Black Bottom Pie" –
p. 124. And then Andy, whose birthday
was 3/1 (and boy, what a memorable day that was as we got stranded in Newark 's airport), decided
he wanted chocolate so it came down to either the "Ultrasmooth Chocolate
Malted Pie" (he loves malts) or "Black Bottom Pie."
In the end, it was all decided at the grocery store. Whereas the "Black Bottom Pie"
sounded good, it has a lot of ingredients, one of which was Zwieback
crackers. I've heard of them, never used
them, but was sure I'd easily find them in the grocery store. I did not.
So this tipped the scales to the malted pie.
One of the main ingredients for the malted pie was chocolate
wafers. I knew exactly what I was
looking for and found them at Byerly's grocery store. Byerly's is an upscale grocer and when I
looked at the price (over $5), I thought I'd get them cheaper when I went to
Rainbow, a decidedly NOT upscale grocery store.
And so I went to Rainbow to get that and other basic
ingredients for the malted pie and was dismayed to find out that while they
used to carry them, they no longer did.
So this required one more trip to a grocery store that did carry
them. And that meant I had to either
backtrack to Byerly's or hike over to Kowalski's about a mile away. Either way, I was peeved both with the store
and myself ("A bird in the hand...").
Thankfully, Kowalski's had two packages left of the chocolate wafers or
I would have been extremely irked. Mind
you, Target was closer than either of these two but you can't depend on them to
carry stuff like this although they should as these wafers are the base for
every type of black-bottomed pie, like Grasshopper Pie, known to man. And who doesn't love Grasshopper Pie...except
me? (Seriously. Can't stand mint. Can't.)
Okay then, so I got all the ingredients together and
assembled this pie in short order and then put it in the refrigerator to chill.
The instructions tell you that the chocolate filling will be the consistency of
pudding and that's exactly how it was when I pulled it out of the fridge for
serving – pudding. So forewarned is
forearmed: it's a rather messy pie to
cut and serve but very, very tasty. And
Andy was a happy camper and so that's all that mattered.
So one more word about an ingredient before I set you loose
on this sucker: "malt
powder." If your grocery store
carries this, you should be able to choose between "original" and
"chocolate."
"Original" is cream-colored and chocolate is,
well...chocolate. I had a container of
chocolate malt in my cupboard, circa the
year 2000 something but it was as hard as a rock (guess I didn't use it much) –
go figure. And so when it came down to purchasing a new container, I hemmed and
hawed between the two flavors. I finally
decided on "original" because the recipe did not say "buy
chocolate malt powder" but I left it up to Andy for the final word and he
didn't care because by this time, where was his pie anyway?? So I saved myself
another trip back to Byerly's to exchange one for the other and just went with
"original."
When I posted on Facebook that I was making this pie and
would post the recipe later, one of my friends said "So...I'm coming
over?" and I said "Oh darn, we were just going out for a bite to
eat." And we did. Since Andy's actual birthday was a comedy of
errors, he wanted to go to a fun restaurant near our house, Sonora Grill. So we went and ate really good, "nouveau"
Spanish/Argentinean cuisine, washed down with tequila (me) and a
"cerveza" (beer – him). And
then we went home for pie.
This concludes Pi Day, 2015.
Ultrasmooth Chocolate
Malted Pie – makes one 9-inch single-crust pie
Crust
*24 chocolate wafers (2/3 of a 9-ounce box)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
¼ teaspoon salt
Filling
7 large egg yolks
8 ounces semisweet chocolate (Ann's Note: the authors suggest you use a high-end
chocolate like Tobler or Lindt but I couldn't find anything that
was semisweet so I used Nestles.)
2 cups heavy cream
¼ cup malt powder (Ann's Note: as mentioned above, you can buy either
"original" or "chocolate.")
*Ann's Note: this pie
crust was almost swallowed up by the filling so if I made this recipe again, I
think I'd just the entire box of wafers (not that many are left anyway) and
adjust the butter and salt accordingly.
Crust Preparations
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Crush the wafers into find crumbs in a food processor or put
them into a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin. You should have 1 ½ cups. (Ann's Note:
As noted above, you may want to increase this yield). Put the crumbs, butter and salt into a 9-inch
pie pan and use your fingers to mix them together. Press the crumbs onto the bottom and sides of
the pie pan. Bake for 6 minutes and set
the pie crust aside to cool.
Filling Preparations
In a medium mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks well and set
them aside. Chop the chocolate into
small pieces and set it aside. Scald the
cream in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan.
When the cream begins to steam, stir in the chocolate until it has
melted completely.
Very gradually, pour the chocolate mixture into the egg
yolks, stirring continuously as you pour.
Pour the filling mixture back into the saucepan and set it over low
heat. Continue to cook the filling,
stirring it constantly, until it is steaming and has thickened to a puddinglike
consistency, about 5 to 10 minutes. Do
not let the filling boil.
With the mixture off the heat, stir in the malt powder.
Let the filling cool for 10 minutes and pour it into the pie
shell. Before serving, cool the pie
completely in the refrigerator, at least 2 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment