Chocolate Cream Pie

It is Pi Day, March 14th

3.141592653589793238……

Thanks to my oldest son who knows more digits of pi than I.

I am trying to get this bake and post done on actual Pi Day.

Usually I am more prepared, but this week has been exceptionally nutty, kids home from school (not coronavirus), schools shut down for the next three weeks (due to coronavirus), work trip on, work trip cancelled and an eight-year old’s birthday yesterday.

Thus, I am not as prepared as I would like to be for this bake, but I am doing it any way! So, bear with me!

Making the crust or Pate Brisee, is simple, I have done it many times. I am chilling it, then I will blind bake it while I make the filling.

Okay, so this is a multiple step filling, and it is a variation of Martha’s cream pies and requires a ton of page flipping while making this.

I have all the substitutes ready, in the pot and ready to go, I get it to the simmering point.

Now we whisk the egg yolks with the hot milk.

Now we strain into a second pot and bring cook this mixture.

After a few minutes of constant whisking, we add the chocolate and then we strain again in to a new bowl…so for those who have lost count, two pots, two strainers and two bowls…plus the ice bath bowl

Ok we are now ice bathing…waiting for the pie crust to cool and making the whipped cream for the top

Martha now coats the bottom of the pie shell with melted chocolate, this seems like a good idea, she doesn’t say why we do this, but it is part of the instructions so we are doing it.

This is a pain… the chocolate is really difficult to brush on, I tried using he spoon but is still a pain.

I now poured the filling into the shell…it is quite runny, but has cooled so we now wait two hours and we will see

I just checked and it has been an hour and I am not holding my breathe

It is not firmed up yet

Okay so my timeline is not gloing how I wanted

For future, I will make my filling in advance so it firms up in time.

Ok we are leaving this overnight in the fridge and hopefully if sets

See you in the morning!

This is not good – the filling is the consistency of ketchup!

This is a disaster

Small Rant: Martha does not tell you the consistency the filling needs to be when you take it off the heat the second time, she just gives you how long it should cook…this is where we got into trouble. I know that it should have the consistency of pudding, and it was starting to but I was instructed 2-3 minutes on the heat – so that’s what I did – End of Rant

This is a disaster of biblical proportions – well not really, but you know

So I put the pie in the freezer for a few hours – it is a lost cause, but I need the filling firm to put the whipped cream on it

I top the frozen pie with whipped cream – that had to be re-whipped as it was waiting since yesterday – ugh!

This keeps getting worse – it is impossible to cut and get a clean slice

Ok, the flavour was really good, the crust was, as always, amazing, the whipped cream had too much icing sugar but was not bad, the filling’s consistency was just wrong