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

[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