Chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding pie, desert recipe This Light Chocolate Pudding Pie Will See You Through to Spring
We love a recipe with a twist. It’s why we put miso in an otherwise traditional blueberry cake, tahini in a classic chocolate brownie, and cheddar Cheez-Its in a straight up apple crumb bar. That said, we won’t riff on every bit of nostalgia that pulls at our heartstrings. No? Don’t believe me? Have you seen Chris Morocco’s new recipe for a diner-style chocolate pudding pie?
It’s epic. It’s delicious. And when you’ve got a crispy crust, a rich chocolate pudding, and an impressive mound of cocoa-dusted whipped cream, there’s not much else you need to fuss with. The kicker? For all its grandeur, it’s actually very possible to pull off, even for baking and dessert refuseniks like me. Here are a few things to know before you dive in.
The pie crust is inspired by a version from cult-favorite baker Stella Parks—it has a higher hydration dough (i.e. there’s more water), which makes it more forgiving to beginners like me, since the dough can tolerate some extra flour dusting when you’re rolling it out. The thing to know though is that more water = more gluten development, so crispy can turn to tough real fast if you’re not careful. Just make sure to be precise in how much liquid you’re actually distributing, and not to overwork the dough.
And a note on that: You chill the dough in the pie dish, as opposed to forming it into a disc, chilling it for a while, letting it come to room temp, and then rolling it out to fit. This means you won’t have to wrestle the dough as much to get it into a thin layer, and hopefully, that means you won’t have to handle it too much to get comfortably in the dish. Pro tip: Make sure that the dough is in a relatively even disc shape (use your hands!) before pulling out the rolling pin. If it’s got any angles to start with, it will likely keep those when you roll, and you want as perfect a circle as you can get before moving it to the dish.
You’re blind baking this bad boy, and you need to take the time to get it right. We’re going for a deep chestnut brown here, and rushing through it is not an option. If it’s really taking a while (i.e. much longer than the 35 minutes denoted in the recipe) you can always move the dish to the lower third of the oven, which will put the crust bottom closer to the heat source. If you’re worried about the edges getting a little past golden brown, just carefully wrap any vulnerable spots with some foil.
There’s a lot of whisking. You will get a work out. It will pay off in the form of silky smooth results. Failing to whisk means some spots will get heated and dry out, allowing a sludgy skin to form on all that hot, bubbling dairy—which is about as gross as it sounds.
How does it get so over-the-top high and stay that way? Gelatin. You need stabilization if you want to make this pie ahead of time, and this recipe will hold for three days easily in its perfectly assembled form. You can still make this sky-high whipped cream castle without the gelatin, but you’ve got a serving window of about 1-2 hours instead.
Oh and one more thing: The whipped cream is super salty. This, Chris assures me, was a deliberate choice, albeit a controversial one. For one, no whipped cream should ever taste like bland milkiness. For two, salt accentuates the flavors happening elsewhere, which makes the whole thing work better together.
Get the recipe via Bon Appetit