Thanksgiving week was a big cooking and experimentation week for me. The last night my parents were in town I decided to make chocolate cream pie for dessert. I’d seen a recipe from Smitten Kitchen that I thought looked good. The only issue was it had a pastry crust and I’m terrible at making pie crust. So I decided to make a chocolate graham cracker crust instead.
Ingredients
Crust
- 1 ½ cups finely crushed chocolate graham crackers (24 squares)
- 1/3 cup butter, melted
- 3 tablespoons sugar
Filling
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
- 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups whole milk
- 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (not more than 60% cacao), finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup chilled heavy cream
Directions
Crust
- In food processor crush chocolate graham crackers.
- Melt butter and mix well into crushed crumbs
- Press cracker and butter mixture into bottom and sides of pie plate with fingers or flat bottom of glass
- Chill for at least a hour
Filling
- Whisk together cornstarch, 1/3 cup sugar, cocoa powder, and salt in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, then gradually whisk in milk. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly, then boil, whisking, two minutes (mixture will thicken). Remove from heat and whisk in chocolate and vanilla until smooth.
- Pour filling into cooled shell and chill, its surface covered with wax paper (if you want to prevent a skin from forming), until cold, at least two hours.
- Just before serving, beat cream with remaining two tablespoons sugar until it just holds soft peaks.
The final product wasn’t quite what I wanted because I rushed chilling the crust for the pie and put the filling in to soon. The result was that the pie pieces didn’t come out whole. On the plus side the pie while not pretty was super tasty. So next time I’ll be more patient with my crust and super chill it in the freezer if necessary.
