Last night we watched Julie & Julia and great surprise, I loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it to infinity. I wish I was Julia Child. When Julie was listing their similarities I was thinking maybe Julia Child and are are rather twin-ish too… tall, weird (but such charming) voices… and then the list ended. Dang. But anyway, Amy Adams was just as charming as always and Meryl Streep as lovely as ever. So for those of you’ve who’ve seen it, remember the scene in the very beginning where pre-food blogger Julie makes a chocolate cream pie after another awful day? Yes well, I couldn’t stop thinking of a cool creamy, chocolate cream pie. I’ve never had it before, but I figured… chocolate and cream? Can’t go wrong there. So I Google-ed and Food Gawker-ed a recipe and found a couple. My first choice was the one on Epicurious, but it was really hard and took forever to set. So I found a simpler one on Cooks.com. But it just called for a regular old pie crust, and the chocolate wafer one from Epicurious sounded so delicious, so I stole the crust from that one. And the Cooks recipe didn’t really specify how much chocolate to use (3 squares? Huh?) so I used the chocolate measurements from The Kitchen Sink Recipes. And off I went to Hero for corn starch, whipping cream, chocolate wafers, and unsweetened chocolate. Corn starch was a little challenging. “Excuse me, do you know where the corn starch (Points to “corn starch” written on recipe) is?” “Cooorrn starrrchh. Ah, moment. (Walks three feet down the baby formula aisle, pretends to look around) Sorry, finished.” I’ve noticed here instead of “Nope, don’t got it,” you’ll get “Finished.” I thought finished actually meant gone until the soy milk was finished at two cafes at 8 AM. Anyway. Adventures in the baking aisle, I found something with the word “corn” on it in English and Bahasa then searched for a box with the Bahasa word. And then I found it, a box with a big corn ear on it and CORN STARCH in big, English letters… Ingredients in hand I headed back home, but had to run the last block because it started raining. Yay, burned off a teaspoon of chocolate cream pie! But I really got lucky, the rain really started just as I closed the door. (Rainy season here, I will never look at rain the same again. It is impressive. Rain at home is really really wimpy in comparison.)

I started with the crust. I couldn’t find plain chocolate wafers, so I got chocolate sandwich cookies and scraped out the insides. Worked just fine. But then I didn’t mash them up enough and the crust was giant cookie chunks, so I had to scrape it all out and really whale on it a little. But the crust part was easy easy. Smashed up cookies, butter, sugar. Check. Into the oven for fifteen minutes ish. Then after a snack break (leftover dinner, Rus’ Vietnamese rice paper rolls, yum,) and on to the cream bit. I’m getting wise in my old age, and I measured out all the ingredients before starting to mix them together in a hot saucepan. Sugar, cornstarch, salt, chopped up chocolate. Slowly add in the milk. It stays runny for a long time, then kind of suddenly becomes thick and deliciously pudding-ey. I had to enlist Rus as a stirrer so I could whisk up the egg yolks, then pour half the chocolate stuff in with the eggs, then pour all that back in the pot. Trixy, and I don’t understand it, but whatever. Then a little splash of vanilla, then into the crust! Yahoo. All the recipes said to put wax paper right on the filling while it cooled so it wouldn’t get filmy, and one said to butter it so it wouldn’t stick. So I put buttered wax paper over it, but after the painful hours and hours later, the paper just peeled off the top layer of chocolate cream. So the butter didn’t do much. But no film! And it doesn’t matter if the top’s ugly, it gets covered with whipped cream.

Julie Powell Inspired Chocolate Cream Pie on a Rainy Day

Crust:

2 cups chocolate wafer cookie crumbs

7+ tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1/3 cup sugar

Filling:

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup corn starch

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped up tiny

1++ cup bittersweet chocolate chips

2 1/2 cups whole milk

3 egg yolks

3/4 cup whipping cream

1 tablespoon sugar

Mix together the cookie crumbs, butter, and sugar and press the mixture into a pie pan. Bake at 350 F for 15+ minutes.

Measure out sugar, cornstarch, salt, chocolate, and milk. Mix them all except the milk in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir the milk in slowly. Stir constantly until it starts to boil.

Beat the egg yolks in a bowl that can hold half the chocolate mixture, then stir in half of the chocolate mixture. Then pour all that business back into saucepan. Stir for one minute and add vanilla. Pour into the crust. Butter the waxed paper and stick it right on the filling. Refrigerate for 5++ hours.

When it’s time (or you can’t wait one second longer) mix the whipping cream up and spoon it on top. Add a little cocoa powder if you’re feeling fancy.

Slice, and enjoy the beauty that is pudding disguised as pie, covered in whipped cream.

 

 

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