Chocolate Cream Pie
You have to love it when someone asks for a birthday pie instead of a pedestrian cake. My co-worker Meg wanted a chocolate cream pie for her birthday, and she wanted it with a regular pie crust instead of a traditional cookie crumb crust. I used my standard Cook’s Illustrated vodka crust and an epicurious.com recipe for the filling.
I thought the pie turned out well, although I did over bake the crust. The chocolate pudding was creamy and had rich chocolate flavor. I used a combination of 55% and 72% Valrhona and Ghirardelli chocolates. I doubled the amount of whipped cream as I thought it would be better, presentation-wise.
Several of my co-workers couldn’t wrap their head around pudding from scratch. They thought by “homemade” I meant that I used Jello’s 5 minute cook and serve mix. I had to insist several times that there was no box involved. Homemade pudding is pretty easy, try it yourself and impress some people.