The other night I was determined to make a beautiful dinner and a mind-blowing dessert to, uh, blow minds. I’d been waiting for an occasion to make a French Silk Pie, so I found a recipe from Martha Stewart that didn’t look too hard.
Failure. TWICE a failure. Thanks for nothing, Martha. (the rest of the meal was good — phew!) Although it may also have been the fault of the chocolate. For some reason, I had a giant Costco bag of chocolate chips in the pantry and I figured I would use those. Anyhow, bad chocolate melts into a gross clump and I gave up.
This was a couple of days before Xmas at Sasano HQ, and this year I was assigned dessert for my contribution. NO PROBLEM. But I figure failing three times would break my heart, so I found another recipe, this one from Epicurious.
Being me, I forget to get ingredients until Xmas DAY. It’s hard to get groceries that day, but I didn’t need much. I found some nice bars of Lindt Madagascar dark chocolate, vanilla extract, and a half litre of whipping cream at the Shopper’s Drug Mart. Oh yeah, and a box of graham crumbs for the crust. Oldest nephew has a nut allergy, so I had to improvise.
It is SO EASY, people. Crumbs, melted butter = crust. Didn’t even bother baking it. Done. Then make a sort of custard with eggs and sugar and milk. I melted the chocolate in a double boiler (really, it was a little pot of boiling water in which I immersed a little bowl. I am not that fancy).
You get what you pay for with chocolate. You want chocolate that actually melts, and that only happens with the good stuff. Something about cocoa butter, I figure. Anyhow, if it’s not good enough to eat, it’s not good enough to bake with. Now we know. The melted chocolate goes into the custard, the custard goes into the crust, refrigerate. I whipped the full 500mL of cream for the cream part right before serving, grated some chocolate sprinkles and WOW.
See what I mean? It was a hit. My 8-year old nephew gave it a 5/5! I need to make this again. So should you.