Learning 2 Bake from Scratch – L

Malted Chocolate Pecan Pie

It snowed today. I don’t mind snow, but when it wasn’t snowing, it was cloudy and gloomy. On a Sunday, that says “bake something”. I’m not sure what it means that the crochet group gave me a pie cookbook. It could be positive, in that they would like more pies. It could be negative, in that they would like better pies. Either way, I have a new pie cookbook and a gloomy, snowy day. How could I resist?

There were a few ingredient issues:

• I had no bittersweet chocolate – but I did have cocoa powder
• I had no brown sugar – but I did have sugar and molasses (that’s why they’re in the picture, but it turns out that I did have brown sugar).
• I had no barley malt syrup – but I did have malt powder.

That caused issues. But first, let’s deal with the crust.

It is an underbaked pretzel. No good, very bad pie crust. Note that the book explicitly says it is for glass pie plates.

The book had a new crust recipe. The two notable differences: 2 Tbl of cider vinegar rather than 1 tsp of lemon juice and incremental liquid additions.

The latter was a disaster. I realized while I was adding water 1 Tbl at a time that this was working the dough too much – at 5 Tbl and there were more to go.

This “freeze it before pre-baking” thing. The crust doesn’t get baked enough – at 425 for 20 minutes, egg-wash, then back in for 3 more. Just guessing, the 3 minutes post-egg-wash should have been at least 5 and another 5 before removing the weights. Maybe 6 to 8 for either/both of those.

As for the ingredient issues, I expected, well, issues.

I didn’t notice that the bittersweet chocolate was labeled with “55%” until after I had used 2oz of “100% cocoa” powder. I added extra butter and a bit of Karo corn syrup to try to emulate melted chocolate. By the way it mixed, I think that worked. But that didn’t resolve the “too much cocoa” issue. It is definitely a chocolate pie with pecans, not a pecan pie with chocolate.

As far as I can tell, the malt powder did nothing. That may be because of the overdose of chocolate or it may be the malt powder, which I bought for bread and have never been able to taste.

The book shall remain nameless until I follow a recipe exactly, rather than winging it – although I am disappointed in the crust.

It looks yummy – and the filling is good with some whipped cream to add moisture. The crust is irredeemable.

Update: I posted this as XLX. I just looked at XLIX and added one. Oops.