Welcome back to my blog! I decided to take a week off from posting, but last week was my mom’s birthday and she requested chocolate cream pie for her dessert! I have never made a pie before, I bake lots of things, but pie is not one of them. Not for any specific reason, just that my mom always bakes them. So here I am sharing my experience of baking a pie from scratch for the first time! I hope you enjoy hearing about my experience!
The first thing I needed to do was find a recipe, so I read a few from google and found the King Arthur Baking (not sponsored) recipe. I didn’t change anything in the recipe except for the salt amount because I have to be on a low-sodium diet. All of the directions and measurements are from their recipe, which you can print from this link, but below are also the directions and what I did.
There are some good pre-made crusts out there, but I wanted to make the crust from scratch along with everything else! Well except for the cream, I was going to make it, but then I thought of cool-whip and I decided to use that instead. Fun fact, I did not realize cool-whip was kept in the freezer section, I spent 5 minutes just going down the dairy aisle multiple times before it dawned on me. 🙂
Making and Baking the Crust
The first thing I did was get all of my ingredients out! What you’ll need is:
-1 1/2 cups of flour
-1/2 teaspoon of salt
-1/4 cup of vegetable shortening (I used butter flavored because that’s what I had in the pantry)
-4 tablespoons of unsalted butter
-1/8 to 1/4 cup of ice water (I used 1/4cup)
The first thing I did was measure out 1/4 cup of water and add 5-7 ice cubes, just so it’s extra cold. I set that aside and then with a medium-sized bowl whisked together the flour and salt. The next step was to work in the shortening, but I ended up doing this by hand because I found it to be easier than using a fork or whisk. Then once it was mixed into small lumps I added the butter, a few chunks at a time, which I also did by hand until it was well incorporated. The last step was to add in the water, pour it in a little at a time while mixing with a fork. Once the dough was mixed with no floury bits in the bowl and the dough stayed together when I squeezed it, I transferred it to a cleaned, lightly floured surface.
I worked the dough over a few times and formed it into a ball and then patted it down to make a disk shape, about 3/4″ thick. The recipe said to roll the disk to smooth the edges, but I completely did not see that step when I was baking the pie, so feel free to do it if you like. Lastly, I wrapped it in plastic wrap and set it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
In those 30 minutes, I cleaned my work area, put away ingredients, preheated the oven to 400℉, and most likely danced and sang to some show tunes. After 30 minutes, I floured my rolling pin and rolled the dough until it was about a 13″ circle. Mine turned out to be an odd shape, so I made sure to measure the width of my rolled out dough so that it was wide enough even though it wasn’t a circle shape.
Now came probably the hardest part of this baking ordeal, actually getting the dough in the pie pan. I probably should have looked up how to do it, but I just carefully picked up one side and slid it into the pan, and thankfully the rest followed. It did rip in one place, but I easily fixed it by pressing the dough back together. Make sure to grease your pan before doing this, I used plain old olive oil cooking spray. While writing this I noticed that the directions said to put the pie pan with the crust in the fridge for 10 minutes, but I did not do that, so I again leave that up to you! The last step is to blind bake the crust.
After transferring the crust to the pie plate I rolled the over-hanging dough under to form a thicker crust. Lastly, I crimped the edges, but I already have a crimped pie pan so I just needed to press the indents in. I then lined the top of it with parchment paper and placed a second pie plate on top because I don’t have any pie weights. I baked it for 20 minutes, removed the other pie plate and parchment paper. Then baked the crust for 10-20 more minutes with a pie shield until it was a great golden brown color and smelled delicious! I made the crust the night before, so once the crust and pan were cool I covered it and put it in the fridge.
Making the Delicious Chocolate Filling
The ingredients that you’ll need:
-2 tablespoons of unsalted butter
-1 1/3 cups of chopped semisweet chocolate (I used Ghirardelli bars)
-1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
-2/3 cup of sugar
-3 tablespoons of cornstarch
-2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
-1/8 teaspoon salt
-3 large egg yolks
-1 cup of heavy cream
-2 cups of milk
The directions also said that an optional 1 teaspoon of espresso powder could be added, which I ended up not using, but thought I’d let you know just in case you decide to try this recipe and want to add it. The first step was to put the butter, chopped chocolate, and vanilla extract in a bowl, but I didn’t do that thinking I could do that at a later time. I would recommend doing this step first because I had to quickly do it while the other mixture was on the burner. I whisked the sugar, cornstarch, cocoa, and salt (this is also where you add the espresso powder) in a medium saucepan, not on the heat. Then added 1/2 of the cream and all of the egg yolks, whisking until the mixture is smooth.
I put the mixture over medium heat adding in the remaining cream and milk. Then spent about 5-10 minutes whisking the mixture until it came to a boil. Only boil for about 1 minute, or until the mixture reaches 200℉. Mine only got up to 170℉, but I found that it was starting to catch on the bottom, so I took it off the heat because it seemed thick enough. Remember the chocolate and butter mixture I didn’t pull together before I started whisking the sugar mixture over the heat, well I quickly pulled it together and added the hot mixture over the chocolate and butter and whisked until smooth.
A step I originally was going to skip, but glad that I didn’t was to strain the filling. I strained it into a metal bowl that was shallow with more surface area because the filling had to chill and more surface area will make the filling cool quicker. Make sure to add a layer of plastic wrap, pressed into the filling so that a film doesn’t form. I let it cool for 1 1/2 hours and then transferred it to the crust, that was in the fridge overnight. As I said before I did not use the recipe for the cream and just used the good ol’ trusty cool whip. I let the pie set in the fridge for about 7 hours. Then instead of covering the whole pie with cool whip, I just put it on the individual cut pieces. I found the longer it sets in the fridge the more delicious it got!
Final thoughts : )
This pie is worth all of the time and energy! I love to bake and find it very therapeutic, so to me, it didn’t seem time-consuming. In the future, I could definitely multi-task making the crust and filling at the same time, but for my first time, I’m glad I broke it up and took my time. If you are looking for a rainy day activity you should definitely make this pie! PS my mom loved it!
I would love to see your pictures or comments if you bake this yummy chocolate cream pie! Follow me on Instagram @aneclecticplace where you can see “behind the scenes” pictures and stay update about when I post! 🙂
Take care and stay safe,
Renée
This pie is sooooo yummy!!!