Double-Pie Birthday Edition: Chocolate Cream and Strawberry Rhubarb!

Yesterday, in honor of Suzanne's birthday, I made two pies: a chocolate cream pie with a whipped cream topping, and a strawberry rhubarb pie with a closed top.

For info about the making of, keep reading below.

A couple days ahead of time, I made up four batches of Mark Bittman's sweet pie crust. Because I used a large pie pan this time for the strawberry-rhubarb, I knew I'd need more than just one bottom crust and one top crust. I wound up using three: one and a half for bottom and top both. It probably would have been better with four, but no biggie. The recipe's available on my very first pie post, here. I froze them, which is a good strategy as long as you remember to thaw them in time. Mine wound up spending about an hour and a half on the counter before I could start rolling them out.

Yesterday morning I pulled the dough out to thaw, then started with the chocolate cream pie, using this recipe from the Cooks Illustrated baking book:

Chocolate Cookie Crumb Crust
16 - 18 Oreo cookies (with filling), broken into rough pieces, about 2 1/2 cups
2 TBS butter , melted and cooled 

Chocolate Cream Filling
2 1/2 cups half-and-half
pinch table salt
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 TBS cornstarch
6 Large egg yolks at room temperature
6 tablespoons butter (cold), cut into 6 pieces
6 ounces semisweet chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate finely chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Whipped Cream Topping
1 1/2 cups heavy cream (cold)
1/4 Cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract 

1. For the Crust: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. In bowl of food processor fitted with steel blade, process cookies with 15 one-second pulses, then let machine run until crumbs are uniformly fine, about 15 seconds. (Alternatively, place cookies in large zipper-lock plastic bag and crush with rolling pin.) Transfer the crumbs to a medium bowl, drizzle with butter, and use fingers or a wooden spoon to combine until butter is evenly distributed.
2. Pour crumbs into 9-inch pie plate. Press crumbs evenly onto bottom and up sides of pie plate using the bottom of a 1/2 cup measuring cup. Refrigerate lined pie plate 20 minutes or more to firm crumbs, then bake until crumbs are fragrant and set, about 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack while preparing filling.
3. For the Filling: Bring half-and-half, salt, and about 3 tablespoons sugar to simmer in medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally with wooden spoon to dissolve sugar. Stir together remaining sugar and cornstarch in small bowl, then sprinkle over yolks and whisk, scraping down sides of bowl, if necessary, until mixture is glossy and sugar has begun to dissolve, about 1 minute. Whisk yolks thoroughly in medium bowl until slightly thickened, about 30 seconds. When half-and-half reaches full simmer, drizzle about 1/2 cup hot half-and-half over yolks, whisking constantly to temper; then whisk egg yolk mixture into simmering half-and-half (mixture should thicken in about 30 seconds). Return to simmer, whisking constantly, until 3 or 4 bubbles burst on the surface and mixture is thickened and glossy, about 15 seconds longer.
4. Remove to a cool burner. Whisk in butter until incorporated; add chocolates and whisk until melted, scraping pan bottom to fully incorporate. Stir in vanilla, then immediately pour filling into baked and cooled crust. Press plastic wrap directly on surface of filling and refrigerate pie until filling is cold and firm, about 3 hours. (The plastic wrap will stick at first, but then release once solidified.)
5. Just before serving, beat cream and sugar to soft peaks, then add vanilla and beat to hard peaks. Spread or pipe whipped cream over chilled pie filling.

Now, I will not pretend to be a smooth kitchen operator who never makes mistakes. In fact, I'm kind of a disaster a lot of the time, though I'm getting less so (and part of the point of this pie-a-week experiment is so that I get real competence). Case in point: I made the crust and put it in the fridge to cool; I made the filling; then I took the crust out and put in the filling. It looked beautiful!

Then I realized I'd forgotten to bake the crust first.

So, I scooped out the filling. But parts of the crust came with it. So now I had a broken crust and filling that was full of gritty oreo powder.

At Suzanne's recommendation, I just mixed the filling all together despite the oreo crumbs. Then I scooped out the crust and saved it, just in case.

I started a new crust. Luckily I don't eat Oreos usually (though while baking I must have eaten about 10 just because the bag was sitting there), so there were plenty left for a second round in the food processor. I re-melted and cooled the butter, then drizzled it over the crumbs again. Then I realized I hadn't put all the cookies in, only about 5. I realized this because the new mixture didn't even cover the pie plate.

Luckily I had the old pie crust, so I was able to add it back in (along with the sodden filling-soaked parts) and press everything all out. It was ridiculously sticky though because of the filling mixed in, so I had to crush a couple more cookies in order to have a dry crumb layer on top, that made it just dry enough to press into the pie pan. I chilled it, then took it out and this time baked the sucker. After I let it cool again, I put in the filling, and started the chilling.

Here's what it looked like, without topping:




Pretty good, huh?

Now, as it happens, this pie turned out awesome. The filling didn't taste gritty from oreo crumbs at all; the crust didn't get mushy from filling cross-contamination. Both parts of the equation were pretty much perfect.

So the lesson here is: mistakes are okay. As long as you fix them, and don't panic, and are lucky. (Also, as long as no guests show up for the first hour and a half of your party, because mistakes make everything take much longer... and if you're like me you started late and planned poorly anyway and making mistakes makes everything spiral out of control and then you're still running around in circles at the last minute). Yes, mistakes are fine. No big deal.

For the strawberry-rhubarb pie, I used the Mark Bittman pie crust as mentioned above, then made the filling from this recipe, from the Baking Illustrated book mentioned above:

2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1.5 lbs strawberries, hulled and quartered (about 5 cups)
1.5 lbs rhubarb, trimmed and peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces (5-6 cups)
1 cup plus 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 Tablespoons arrowroot, or 4 tablespoons tapioca starch
1 egg white, lightly beaten 

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until smoking. Add the rhubarb and 1/4 cup of the sugar and cook, stirring frequently, until the rhubarb has shed most of its liquid bug is still firm, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a large plate and refrigerate until cool.
2. Roll out bottom pie dough and pre-bake in pan (I pre-bake at about 425 degrees for about 10 minutes, with fork-holes in the pie crust and buttered weighted foil over the top to keep it from losing its shape).
3. In a small bowl, mix 3/4 cup of sugar, arrowroot/tapioca, and salt. In a large bowl, toss together strawberries, cooled rhubarb, vanilla, and orange zest. Sprinkle the sugar/thickener mixture on top and stir to combine. Let stand for 15 minutes.
4. Adjust the oven rack to the lowest position and increase the temp to 500 degrees.
5. Spoon the filling into the pie crust!
6. Then roll out the top crust and get it on top of the pie somehow. (Ero says: I roll dough between two layers of cling wrap, then pull one off and flop it by way of the under-plastic.) Crimp it and decorate it as preferred. Cut 8 slits in dough top. Beat the egg white and brush it on top; sprinkle a small handful of sugar over.
7. Lower the oven to 425 degrees. Place the pie on a foil-covered baking sheet (this will catch the drippings and prevent your oven from smelling like a forest fire); bake until the top crust is golden, 20 to 25 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees and continue to bake until the juices bubble and the crust is golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes longer.
8. Cool on a wire rack 3 to 4 hours if you can wait that long.

Now, I had problems with this, too: 

The recipe as originally written called for arrowroot but all I had was tapioca flour/starch. I've modified the amount above, but that's a bit speculative. My panicky last-minute googling told me that they're pretty interchangeable, but my filling turned out quite loose so I assume I needed more. 

I also forgot, filling-wise, that I was using a much larger pie pan than called for, and had to send Suzanne to the store for extra strawberries at the last minute. (My adjusted amounts turned out to be more like 8 cups of strawberries, and half again most the other ingredients). 

I also had a hard time with the solid top- I've been making lattice crusts, which look fancy but are actually pretty forgiving in that you don't need a continuous piece of dough. By the time I'd got the dough centered on top of the pie,  I had pieces missing all around the side, and had to smush patches in place. Most of those later got soaked in puddles of bubbled-up juice.

 However, all in all this turned out great. It was loose, and fell apart a bit when serving, and wasn't as pretty as it could've been, but it sure tasted delicious.

Take-away lesson number two:

it doesn't matter if you make mistakes, it's still pie.