This week we have another fun pie for Pie July! This is Chocolate Topping Pie!
- Chocolate Topping:
- 6 T butter
- 6 T confectioner’s sugar
- 1 1/2 squares Baker’s Unsweetened Chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
- 1 egg yolk
- Peppermint Filling:
- 1 envelope (1 T) gelatin
- 1/4 cup cold water
- 2 egg yolks, unbeaten
- 1 1/4 cups milk
- 1/2 cup finely crushed peppermint stick candy (or round peppermints)
- 1/2 cup cream, whipped
- a few drops red food coloring
- 2 egg whites
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 baked 9-inch pie shell
- Mix gelatin and cold water.
- Combine egg yolks and milk, and cook and stir over low heat until mixture coats a metal spoon. Pour over gelatin, add candy; stir until dissolved. Chill. (or add crushed candy when still over eat if using round mints. Stir until candy is dissolved, then mix into gelatin and chill.)
- When gelatin mixture is slightly thickened, fold in whipped cream and food coloring.
- Beat egg whites with salt until foamy, then add sugar gradually, beating until peaks hold. Fold into gelatin mixture. Spoon into pie shell and chill until firm.
- For topping, cream butter and add confectioners sugar gradually. Add melted chocolate and egg yolk and mix well.
- Spread topping over chilled peppermint filling and chill again.
So, this pie has a chocolate top with a peppermint chiffon filling. I was pretty excited about this one, mostly because the “chocolate top” was basically frosting. Pie frosting. Pie frosting!!!
Okay, calm down. We have to make a pie.
The recipe calls for peppermint sticks, but I couldn’t find any in the store so I just subbed in Starlight Mints (round, red and white striped, wrapped in cellophane) and it seemed to work just fine. The only change I had to make with the recipe was to add the crushed mints while it was still over the heat, because I wanted to make sure they all melted and incorporated.
Oh! And I also bought pasteurized in the shell eggs. Which seem to be almost a necessity for making vintage pie recipes (if you are as big of a freak about not eating raw eggs as Tom is), but if you can’t find them around you, you can omit the egg yolk in the topping and use whites from the carton.
Also – props to Tom’s mom who helped me out when I was trying to beat a pasteurized egg white and nothing was happening. Turns out it takes about twice as long and some cream of tartar to get pasteurized egg whites to whip, but hang in there because it WILL happen. Eventually.
Frosting! Frosting. Frosting. Frosting.
I frosted my pie with chocolate frosting.
Oh, one more small change. I didn’t have the stuff to make a regular pie crust, so I made a graham cracker one and baked it at 350 degrees for 8 minutes and used that.
All it said was a BAKED pie crust. It didn’t say it couldn’t be graham cracker.
“Did my dad just steal a bite of pie?”
“Yes.”
“Apparently this pie is so good, you’ll steal it from your own son.”
The Verdict: Very Good!
From The Tasting Notes –
Good! The peppermint chiffon filling was very light and airy, almost like a peppermint marshmallow. The chocolate frosting topping was great. There were a lot of suggestions about what this pie most tasted like, a few were “a sundae with mint ice cream”, “a chocolate easter egg” and even that the topping (when chilled solid) tasted like those little foil-wrapped chocolate Ice Cubes, the ones with the polar bear on them. The graham cracker crust was really good with the pie, and if you make this I highly suggest putting it in a graham cracker crust. Another suggestion would be to use a dark chocolate or omit some of the sugar from the topping to make it less sweet (the finished topping was like a milk chocolate), but that is just a personal preference. Overall, a great pie, and it was gone in two days!
this looks REALLY delicious! I want to try it!!!
WANT.
The construction is almost an upside-down black bottom pie (chiffon bottom, chocolate topping). I guess it wouldn’t sound good to call it a blacktop pie, though!
That looks really good!
Yum! I love anything chocolate so I am sure this will be a hit! I love vintage recipes! I recently bought a cookie cookbook from the 1930’s and love it!
A couple things about eggs—
1. You can pasteurize them yourself if you don’t want to go back out to the store.
2. The salmonella, if there’s any, will be in the yolk, not the white, so you don’t have to use pasteurized egg whites. I’m glad they whipped up for you! I had thought that it was impossible to get pasteurized egg white to whip.
This recipe sounds yummy. I’m thinking espresso powder instead of mint…
This post seriously made my day. Especially the stolen pie bit. 🙂
Love this site. 🙂