Monday, November 26, 2018

Chocolate angel pie

I saw this on Cook's Country (America's Test Kitchen) available on Amazon Prime video, Season 7 episode 5, but I do not see the video on You Tube.

It has a pre-baked meringue pie crust. What a great idea. Filled with deep rich chocolate mousse. With whipped cream topping, so it's all puff fluff and foam.

Chocolate filling: It's like a dense mousse except different. Whipped cream instead of beaten egg whites.

* 9 oz milk chocolate
* 5 oz bittersweet chocolate

Yikes! Nearly a pound of real chocolate. That right there is what this pie is about.

Melt in microwave and let it cool (chocolate melts a few degrees above body temperature) No need for bain-marie, just be careful not to scorch.

*  3 egg yolks, whites set aside for meringue.
*  1+1/2 tablespoon sugar
*  1/2 teaspoon salt

Separately

*  1/2 cup Half-&-Half heated to simmering whisked in

Mix all that stuff and pour the heated H&H into it. Return it all to saucepan (that simmered the H&H), so a bit of back and forth there,  reheat a minute until it begins to thicken. Pour from saucepan to bowl of melted chocolate and whisk.

Lick whisk.

Push into a glob on the bottom of the bowl, clean up the sides, push it all down with a spatula. It has lightly cooked egg yolks in it so it begins setting up as it cools like mayonnaise does.

Let it cool to await blending of whipped cream for nice light texture. We're going for a mousse-like thing here with whipped cream.

* 1+1/4 cup heavy cream. Just to it forms peaks

Mix 1/3 of whipped cream into the chocolate sludge to lighten it. Then fold in the rest of the whipped cream to preserve the loft of the whipped cream. Put into smaller bowl, cover with cling film and chill for 3 hours so it firms. This is the basis of the pie. You got your meringue shell to hold it and whipped cream to top it.

Lick the large bowl.

Now, make a meringue pie shell.

Grease a pie pan and sprinkle with cornstarch (which will be in the meringue also). Dump the cornstarch in and shake it around, knocking and turning so it sticks to the grease, then dump out the extra. Make sure to cover the rim because that's where the meringue really sticks.

And meringue sticking to the pie pan rim is a bummer!

* 3 egg whites
* pinch of cream of tartar
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 tablespoon cornstarch

Add dry ingredients to egg whites at the soft stage, clean sides of bowl with rubber spatula so it all mixes. Turn to high for stiff lofty peaks.

* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Dump meringue into prepared pie pan. Push to the sides. No air bubbles allowed. Push up sides of rim. Run thumb around outside edge of rim to push the meringue upward and inward so the baked shell holds maxim amount and the rim is cleared off

Lick thumb.

Put in oven to dry it out and bake. 1.5 hours at 275℉ then 1 hour at 200℉, so then, a total of 2.5 hours at low temperature.

It comes out brown and weird looking and you're all, "What? Wait. What? This is a pie crust? No way." Yes way.

Topping

* 1+1/3 cup heavy cream
* 2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar (fine regular sugar + corn starch) for stability.

Build pie.

Add chocolate mixture. Do no mix or whip, just pile it up and press it in to the sides.

Clean spatula, put whipped cream on top. Allow the chocolate edge to show for dramatic presentation. No seriously, it shows the layers so it's not just a pile of whipped cream in a weird misshapen Dr. Seuss pie shell.

Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Dust with cocoa to make it look pretty. (It's a girl thing.)

This is my new favorite thing and I haven't even had any yet.

This guy in the video below makes a total dummkopf version. Notice the key frame does not match what makes. The video opening frame shows 3 distinct layers like they make on Cook's Country video.  He takes a shortcut instead and makes a ganache that he mixes into his whipped cream for a filling. And it's like ... GAWL!

Come on! I can't believe he doesn't do what is shown. The thing shown below ↓ in the opening frame is what Cook's Country did, but the video shows a shortcut version. OMG, I can't even believe that. Remember the 14 ounces of chocolate? This version doesn't have nearly that much. 1/2 cup chocolate chips is 4oz approximately. What a ripoff. I wan't Cook's Country pie, not this one.


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