things, and a recipe

[threeplusfire]

First off - are there any fandom/multi-fandom Halloween/October fic fests happening? I'm something of a fandom dilettante and don't follow fandom communities aside from Yuletide so I don't know these things. Autumn and winter make me want to write and read a lot of fic it seems.

Something I read in a fic crept into my dreams last night.

The satellite did not fall on our house.

On the open question post, halfacork asked me about pie. So I will share my favorite basic pie recipe. It is the work horse of my pie baking repetoire and carries so many things I make. I use this basic idea of ganache as a springboard for tons of other flavors and things.

You can use any kind of crust. A store bought crust. A cookie crumb crust. A baked pastry crust. Whatever you want. It is mostly a personal preference. My current favorite pie crust is a ginger snap pecan cookie crust.

You will need 3/4 to 1 cup of heavy cream, eight ounces of chocolate, and half a cup of strawberry preserves. (Or cherry or raspberry or whatever sounds really good. I'm considering experimenting with marmalade next.)

Pour the cream and preserves into a large pan and whisk over medium heat until the preserves melt and blend. Your cream will be pastel colored. Stand there at the stove and stare at it. You will see tiny bubbles at the edges of the surface. Soon, you will start seeing larger bubbles come up in a couple places around the pan. The cream will almost look like it is developing a skin. The trick to this is to turn off the heat once the bubbling is regular but before it actually boils. Depending on the size of your pan, this can be very quick or take several minutes. I usually do this in my biggest saute pan, so for me it goes fast.

Once you take the pan off the heat, dump in your chocolate. I advocate for semi-sweet most of the time because it keeps the pie from being too bone jarringly sweet in combination with the preserves. It is helpful for your chocolate to be broken into little pieces if you use a bar. Chocolate chips are very handy for this. (My favorite grocery store kind is Guittard's Akoma Semi-Sweet chips) Whisk the chocolate, which will start to melt in the heat of the cream. Keep whisking, starting in the center and working out to the edge of the pan. Slowly the melted chocolate will blend with your creamy preserves. Whisk until smooth and totally blended.

Now you have two choices! If you want a dense, thick filling then by all means pour this straight into your pie shell and slap it in the fridge. But if you want to lighten the texture, you will need to invest some time. Pour your chocolate into a bowl and stick in the fridge for fifteen minutes. Take it our and whisk/whip the heck out of it for a couple minutes. Imagine you're trying to make whipped cream or meringue. Stick it back in the fridge. Repeat two more times. This fluffs up your chocolate, incorporates some air but allows it to take a more solid form. Slather your chocolate into a pie shell.

You now have delicious, delicious chocolate/something pie. Yay. Serve with fresh whipped cream or fruit on top.

Comments

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

My comm sherlockmas is doing an autumn prompt fest at the moment, though that requires being in BBC Sherlock fandom XD

That pie sounds awesome.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! And it is such a great pie. It is my favorite pie because it is so simple but absolutely divine for dessert.

[splix.livejournal.com]

God, that sounds gorgeous.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

It's quite a decadent pie filling.

[halfacork.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think you tried to walk me through this before but whatever fruit I chose had an awful aftertaste! I must try again! Thank you for this.

Lately I've been hungry for X Men First class slash. Mmmm, Charles & Erik. Want.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

My advice for fruit - berries are really the best in this recipe. Buy whatever is listed as preserves that should just have fruit, sugar & pectin on the label. Morello cherries are amazing for this. Because the recipe is so simple, you want the best tasting ingredients for it. :D

[weirdquark]

That does sound like an excellent, easy, chocolate/something pie. Could you do this with fresh berries or do you need the sugar from the jam/preserves?

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Interesting question! There are two different ways I can see doing this.

One would be to wash and chop up my fruit, then mix it with a cup of sugar and let that sit for a few hours or maybe even overnight. Then drain off the excess juice before mixing it into the cream.

The other way, if you wanted more fruit texture and did not want to add sugar at all (like say if you were using fully sweet chocolate) would be to not add the fruit to the initial cream stage. Chop it and let it drain while you cook the cook and blend the melted chocolate. Then gently mix in the fruit before you put the chocolate into the pie crust.

Please let me know if you try it!

[weirdquark]

Will do! You don't think you should cook the fruit if you were putting it in un-sugared? Having it be cooked would be good, though bits of raw fruit in a chocolaty mixture would be good too.

I've been weight lifting, so I've started trying to eat healthy things with lots of protein and not so much with desserts, so lately all of my sugar has been coming from fruit, with very occasional honey or dark chocolate. This has caused my sugar tolerance to drop -- frozen yogurt and dark chocolate have been treating me okay, but the last time I tried to eat ice cream I had a couple of spoonfuls and got a headache.

But this pie made with fruit and dark chocolate may work for me. (I am also considering higher protein modifications, possibly by adding protein powder, or by using Greek Yogurt instead of the heavy cream. But I think I'll make one modification at a time...)

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I think the decision to cook or not will just depend on what you are using and what sort of texture you want. If you cook it, then use it just like the preserves.

The joy of this recipe is that you can make it with very little sugar but it has such a rich punch of chocolate.

[weirdquark]

Made the pie the other night and it was excellent. We had a Godiva chocolate bar sitting around and used that to improve the Hershey's dark chocolate kisses that was the only other chocolate we had in sufficient quantities.

We ended up using frozen berries that had been sitting around for months -- measured out a cup defrosted it and squeezed out the juice, and then decided we wanted more fruit and repeated the process. We did add the fruit while the cream was heating, though I was using a large pan, so it didn't heat for long. Mostly the fruit was mush, so probably similar in texture to using preserves and added a subtle fruit flavor, but there was the occasional whole blueberry, and it worked very well.

So we'll need to get more good chocolate (and cream and a pie crust) so we can try it again with my high protein modifications and then I can tell myself it's healthy. ::g::

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Oh yay! You're right, frozen fruit would give you a soft texture not unlike preserves. I need to remember that for the next time I experiment with a multifruit pie version.

A friend of mine swears by Alton Brown's chocolate tofu pie. She says the texture is like any good chocolate ice box pie you get at Luby's.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/moo-less-chocolate-pie-recipe/index.html

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

I think I'm gonna try making this tonight. YUM.