Cocoa Chanel Pie

The last 8 days have been INTENSE.  I have plenty of material to blog about, assuming I get permission to share some of it, but for now I’ll just stick with Passover.  I meant to post some total chametz and kitniyot free recipes during Passover for ya’ll but the lack of grain in my diet must have left me a bit weakened because I just couldn’t muster the strength to blog.

For the goyim who don’t know, Passover is week long (well 8 days) holiday when Jews celebrate/commemorate the exodus from Egypt.  How this applies to my stomach: no grains or anything “resembling” grains.  This means no wheat, barley, spelt, rye, oats, rice, soy, corn, lentils, beans or derived products.  Trust me it gets really difficult, especially for a beer lover such as myself.  Baking powder, if made with corn starch, is also out but baking powder made with potato starch is something that I understand to be okay.  Trust me the laws get even more confusing since different people have different things they consider kitniyot.  Sephardic Jews, Jews stemming from the Mediterannean and African regions, don’t bother trying to exclude kitniyot from their diets and thus many of my Jewish friends are “Sephardic for Passover.”  This year I managed to make it almost the whole week, I accidentally ate a crouton on a ceasar salad I ordered before I realized what they were.  Whoops!  As I may have mentioned before I’m not actually religious; I don’t know if there is anyone to pray to, I’d like to think there is at times, but I do enjoy participating in my culture’s traditions.  That’s why I try to follow Passover even though I don’t keep Kosher.  It’s a unifying experience and actually a really interesting diet exercise because it makes you really look at what you eat in relation to grains.  I’m very tempted to try going vegan for a week simply as a way of studying animal products and how prevalent they are in my diet as a mental exercise.  I guess that’s the food scientist in me rearing her ever curious head.

Anyway on to the recipe!  This is a recipe easly adapted to be made KFP, or Kosher for Passover, by using ground nuts to make the pie crust.   Personally I was a little disappointed; I was hoping for the chocolate to BOOM in your face and for the filling to be firmer.  The thickness issue may have been a baking error on my part so this is going in my “work in progress” file.

Cocoa Chanel Pie

almost faithfully from Cook’s Illustrated “Perfect Chocolate Pie”

2 cups chocolate cookie crumbs (or for passover ground walnuts)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 1/2 cups heavy cream (they used half and half, this may have been my downfall)
 1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch (or for passover use potato starch)
6 large egg yolks, room temperature
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter cut into 6 pieces
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, chopped fine
1 tsp vanilla extract

Whipped Topping

1 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and place your oven rack in the middle.  Prep the crust by processing your cookies or nuts until you have fine crumbs.  Mix the crumbs in a bowl with the melted butter and combine with your fingers or a fork.  I say go with clean hands because you’ll get them messy anyway pressing the crumbs into your pie tin to form the crust.  Bake for about 15 minutes then remove and cool.

Bring the cream (or half and half) and 3 tablespoons of sugar to simmer in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.  Mix the remaining sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl to the side.  In another bowl whisk the yolks until thickened.  Sprinkle that cornstarch sugar mixture over the yolks and whisk until the mixture is gloss.

Next we’re going to temper the eggs.  Remember: tempering is adding a small amount of a hot mixture to raw eggs while whisking rapidly and constantly.  This brings the temperature of the eggs up, cooking them, without letting proteins coagulate and become solids.

Whisk in about 1/3 of the hot cream into your eggs, drizzling it in slowly and whisking the whole time.  Do this for about a minute and you should have thickened egg yolks without solids floating in the mixture.  Pour this back into the pan with the remaining cream and whisk constantly until the mixture is thick and glossy.  Remove from the heat.

Whisk in the chocolates, vanilla and butter and then pour the filling through a fine-mesh sieve (so if you did get a little egg it will get filtered out here) over a bowl or your crust.  Cool in your refrigerator for about 3 hours or until firm.

When you are ready to serve beat the cream and sugar in a chilled bowl until you get soft peaks; add the vanilla.  Spread over your pie and serve!  I added a little caramel sauce in my pie before I poured in the chocolate filling.

Filed under: Pies Tagged: Chocolate, gluten free, nuts, pesach