Mrs. Mary's Spicy Chocolate Buttermilk Pie

Having a 'fan' page on Facebook for an ongoing commentary on a slice of life in the Deep South has been an incredible blessing.  Folks (much preferred description than fans) come by to say "Hi" and mostly stick around.  A handful leave, the slice of life not always palatable.  It's okay.  I've left a few pages behind, myself.  The people at FB?  They're not fans:  they're friends.  They comment, share links, like photos of cakes, love Mama (a biggie in my book).  We're there for each other like long-lost kissing cousins.

They've become real friends too:  call-up-on-the-phone-and-talk-'til-the-battery-dies friends.  Mrs. Mary is one of those friends.  Weeks and weeks ago we were chatting on FB about favorite pies and the developing trend of fine chocolates with a heat source in them and she piped up with a comment about a chocolate buttermilk pie with a little pop to it;  then she came up with a recipe!

Despite having adhered to a very strict diet for going on four months,

this piece of pie broke extreme will-power as if it

had never existed.  I ate it.  And licked the plate.

It's a little different from the buttermilk pie usually made here.  This recipe has no flour but twice as many eggs.  It does have a smooth but coarse-custard texture (probably from the cocoa powder?) and is ever so bewitching that I'm having a difficult time not evening up the edges on it (a sure way to consume half of it at one sitting).  And the cayenne in it??? ohhhh wowzers.  It's not hot.  It's a warmth that develops on the tongue after the first few bites that makes the chocolate a deep richness that's indescribable.  Really!

Those are the ingredients in the photo but just in case they won't load for you here's a list:
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips, melted

3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 eggs, beaten until lemony-yellow light

1 1/2 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (I know - the dry erase board has tablespoon)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
TWO unbaked deep dish pie shells 

Melt chocolate chips in microwave, set aside (oops - use your imagination to see chocolate chips in the microwave please).

Combine all dry ingredients and stir thoroughly.  

See the vanilla in the medicine dispenser?  They're awesome

for being able to measure flavors in to prevent fumbling with

spoons at the last moment.

And don't forget the cocoa powder to stir in too!  Take extra care to make sure all lumps from the cocoa powder have been broken up and all the dry ingredients are well-mixed.

Most everybody knows dark chocolate is favored here at Mayree's.
This is Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa powder.
Use what you and your family loves.

Beat eggs until a light lemon-ish color and almost foamy.

Any time the hand mixer is out and being used, the mixing gets done

with the bowl down in the sink.  A bunch of wiping from splatters on

the kitchen walls and cabinets is saved by doing this.

Very slowly add dry ingredients until all are well-incorporated.

I ran out of hands to take a photo of the slow process.

It's smelling fine already!

Mix in the melted chocolate chips.

The intense flavor from the dark chocolate chips is called for in this recipe 

but if you really only like milk chocolate or

**shudder** white chocolate, by all means, go for it.

Add the buttermilk

And the vanilla, giving it one last mixing.

Pour into two unbaked deep dish pie shells.

Don't give me a hard time about not making my own crusts:

I don't have to do everything.

Bake at 350 Fahrenheit for approximately 40 minutes (my oven is a little cool so it may take less time) until the centers are set.  A knife will come out clean when they're done.

 These crusts are full.  Do yourself a favor and put them in
another pan to bake them in.  They didn't bake over,
but the possibility is definitely there.

I couldn't wait until they cooled until even warm.  I ate it hot!

 This piece of pie contains more refined sugars in one slice
than I've put in my body since the Fambly Reunion the
first weekend in June.  And it was worth ever
gram of it!

There you have it!

The top has a playful crunchy crust on it that belies the custard-y and densely-chocolate-y richness beneath.  There's the barely tale tell flavor of the traditional buttermilk pie but it's secondary to the chocolate.  And the cayenne and cinnamon?  I used Penzey's Ceylon Cinnamon but wish I had used their Vietnamese cinnamon to give a stronger presence.  The cayenne is just the right amount.  This small amount isn't hot at all, truly enriching the dark chocolate and leaving a warmth on the tongue that's absolutely exquisite.

This isn't a difficult pie to put together at and the recipe makes TWO (a bonus in my book).  Make your family one this evening.  Better yet, make yourself one this evening.   You'll be glad you did.

Y'all enjoy!

Mary

Chocolate Custard aka Custard's Last Stand...

I know I know - bad pun, right off the bat.  But it's custard and chocolate all at the same time:  the be all to end all of custards.  I'm a fan of custards, the smoothness and egginess and sweetness of them the right amount of everything for my palate.  Maybe I'll learn how to make a bunch of different custards one day - but not soon.  I'm content knowing how to make real banana pudding, a decent flan, and this:  chocolate custard. 

I've made this to use as a filling in a chocolate cake for an aspiring chocoholic.  Her mom's ordered the chocolate overload for the youngster's high school graduation party.  In a small community like this, you grow up knowing everybody or going to school with their younger or older siblings or, heaven forbid,  being related.  The graduate's mom, Brenda, was a year ahead of me in school.  We were in the band together for years and years.  Her dad was in Mama's kindergarten.  I know this family so when the call for a graduation cake came in, I wanted to kick it up a notch for them.  I'm using this chocolate custard as the means to an end.

Before I get on with the tutorial I need to explain 'bout the cakes made here.  They are NOT dried-out-mealy-textured sheet cakes.  Nope.  The closest to a sheet cake I make is a double layer.  Cakes have to have something in them to break up that butter/sugar/egg/flour texture likened to a bad pan of cornbread.  Mine are filled with something like Bavarian cream or lemon curd or fresh strawberry filling or seedless raspberry preserves.  It's the thing that makes them exceptional.  The fillings and home made icings make them of such good flavor and texture as to be memorable.  And I like memorable.

So annnnyways, Miss Abbie's cake is to be special.  A chocolate cake with chocolate custard filling and chocolate butter cream icing.  Here's what you need:

See that post it note to the right?  No recipe until just then! The margarine is missing!  Ohhh no!  Maybe it'll show up at the microwave.

Into the food processor, you know how I love the Cuisinart, put 2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup flour, and 1/2 cup cocoa powder.  Making it for myself, I like to use Hershey's special dark cocoa powder.  And don't give me any problems about that being too much sugar.  No such thing!  Give it a whirl and then add the eggs.

These are free range fertilized eggs from a local farm, Perlena's Peculiar Hens.  Okay.  You caught me...they're from Mama's incredibly tame chickens that speak Hen-ese to you.  Seriously!  Those chickens hear a soul coming through the shop, expecting feed or greenery and they'll sweet talk you right into a handful of corn.   She has the one Araucana chicken that lays the green egg.  Only the outside is green, see?

OOOoooo... seeing more of this home's good stuff today.  That little white bowl is very vintage;  unmarked Homer Laughlin I think.  I forget.  Home grown eggs are VERY yellow and should always be cracked into a separate bowl before being used.  Always.  The first time you drop a rotten egg into a hot skillet to make a fried egg sandwich you'll remember those words of wisdom and vow to never repeat the mistake.  The eggs go into the food processor.

Processing that results in a thick, gummy something-or-another so add the can of evaporated milk and blend again.   If you don't care for the taste of evaporated milk, use 12 ounces of sweet milk, by all means.  I know some souls don't cotton to it.  Money was tight in a family with five growing youngsters.  Sometimes if the sweet milk was gone before a trip into town could be arranged Mama would open a can of evaporated milk, add another can of water to it, and use it like regular milk.  I always kind of liked it on the frosted flakes on a Saturday morning, the only day of the week we had cereal.

Pour everything into the big 8 cup measuring cup.  Put another 2 cups of milk in the food processor and buzz it to get allllll the chocolate out.  Pour that in the measuring cup as well and nuke that chocolate deliciousness for 10 minutes on high.

Look!  There's the margarine and vanilla.  Lots of cooks say you can't tell the difference between real vanilla and imitation.  I dunno.  I'm not going to use anything but Mexican vanilla where flavor is uber important.  As Forrest Gump says, "And that's all I've got to say about that."  Yikes!  You can almost see me in the reflection on the microwave.

Go clean your kitchen while you wait.

oh SNAP!  Now you know my very inexpensive secret to degreasing all the greasy mixing bowls from the icings.  Octagon soap.  It's in the soap dish up there on the left.  Wet the dishcloth and get it very very soapy with that and you won't have any problem getting the dishes clean the first time.  I don't.

After ten minutes, take the custard out of the microwave, whisk in the 4 tablespoons of butter or margarine and a big teaspoon of vanilla.  Return to microwave for another four or five minutes.  Whisk it all again until it's a smooth texture like this:

The whisk is standing up by itself.  See that clementine?  A good cup of custard will come out to be used Monday in a different cake.  I'll grate a bit of clementine rind into it as a teaser, changing the entire dynamic of flavor!

Press the obligatory wrap against the surface to keep nastiness from scumming the deliciousness and let cool.

You absolutely can put the un-nuked custard in an unbaked pie shell and bake as a pie.  Add an another egg if you do.

The ingredients for Chocolate Custard are:

2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3 eggs
1 large can evaporated milk
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons margarine or butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Y'all saw it put together up there -- now go and do and make me proud!

Chocolate Curls: When nothing but awesome will do.

Chocolate is the ultimate flavor.  Have I ever mentioned I love chocolate?  Maybe once or twice?  Yep.  I even like cocoa powder.  Mama will tell you, I'll get a smidge of cocoa powder on a teaspoon and let the small amount rest on my tongue, the flavors migrating to every taste bud individually to collectively create an entire mouthful of taste. 

Years ago, when the fellows were young I had external radiation treatments where the left maxillary sinus was, after-surgery treatment for the nasty disease called Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (woohoo!!! 9 years into remission).  Radiation treatment to the face that close to the ole' schnozzola entirely messes up your smelling which entirely messes up your tasting.  I spent a miserable couple of months, missing the taste of chocolate.  Forget the fatigue, migraines, and weakness from the surgery and treatments, my very soul craved to be whole again with the delightfully-earthy completely-satisfying oral sensation that chocolate is.

It only follows, since chocolate is my favorite, that the chocolate cakes made here are the absolute prettiest and best-est tasting ever. Oh, all the cakes are moist and flavorful, with made-from-scratch fillings and icings, but that chocolate one? Well.  It takes the cake, although the butter cake with lemon curd filling and cream cheese icing runs a pretty close second.  It's also the prettiest, with a layer of dark chocolate ganache and topped with as many milk chocolate curls as won't fall off.

I use milk chocolate chips for the curls.  Dark and semi-sweet chocolates don't have enough fat in them to curl very well.  They'll make tiny tight curlicues that are fine for miniature desserts but not nearly large enough to use on a proper sized cake.  You'd be shaving for forEV-ER (<--insert kid's narrative of The Beast from the movie The Sandlot here).   You can do the whole melting-chocolate-on-the-cookie-sheet for dark chocolate curls but it's a lot of work.

Chocolate is temperamental.   If it gets a drop of water in it the whole batch will seize, turning into a delicious tasting cornmeal-consistency blob of difficulty.  Your options are to try to work shortening or butter back into it and use it for something else or **ahem** disappear it right out of the measuring cup with a spoon.  To date, no one has ever seen seized chocolate in this kitchen.  Heaven forbid it gets too hot either, the muddy looking dull mess is only fit for dolloping on a scrap of cake to be offered to the first youngster to come through the kitchen. 

I like to use Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips for the curls.  For sheer consumption, Nestle is not even close to a favorite brand of milk chocolate, but it does make the prettiest curls.   I've tried every brand of chocolate chip available at WalMart and Piggly Wiggly.  Please don't suggest I try something that's not found locally.   I do the absolute possible best with what's available; if the chocolate isn't at one of those two places, it's not getting bought.  Nestle Milk Chocolate chips are put into the smallest loaf pan.

See those egg shells in the pan on the back burner? I'll use four or five dozen eggs during the course of baking any given weekend.  I rinse them and put them in the warm oven overnight and then give them a whirl in the food processor to use in the garden.  They're an incredible and effective slug killer that doesn't cost a thing.

The big SunFire oven holds at approximately 115 degrees Fahrenheit, a little warm for melting chocolate, but the pan of chips is only in there for 20 minutes.

OOOoooo... Y'all are seeing lots of stuff today.  See my very old-fashioned dripolaters?  They make the best coffee ever.  Forget the French press.  It's the Deep South - I like coffee strong and without an accent, thankyouverymuch.

Twenty minutes later, the chips come out, ready to be stirred smooth.

**giggle** That's my favorite fork, too.  I don't know where it came from, it just appeared before the fellows were born.

Pretty and smooth curls not speckled with holes from air bubbles trapped in the chocolate require a little bit of effort.  It takes a good bit of bumping the pan on a solid surface, the same as cake batter, to have the bubbles rise to the surface.

I put the warm smooth milk chocolate in the butter tray of the refrigerator to cool.  Are you feeling poorly and a little down with life at this point?  Go ahead.  Get a spoon and have a taste of warm milk chocolate.  Bless our female hearts, it IS good for what ails us!  I'm smiling just looking at it.

Pay no attention to the organic bug spray beside the milk.  A steeped concoction of garlic, onion, cayenne pepper, and I forget what other two things are in it, that odoriferous non-toxic-to-kids-and-dogs pesticide will sour in a days time if left on a shelf.  It's nasty!  If you go to the effort to make it, re-purpose a Sunny Delight jug and store it in the refrigerator.

Tadadaaaa!  A very large solid bar of milk chocolate (and a good smattering of dark chocolate ganache in the cup behind it).

This is the smallest loaf pan I have, approximately 3.5 by 7.5 inches, it holds enough chips to top the 10" square cake.  A 9 x 13 inch cake requires another half-bag of chips to adequately cover in curls.

A single solid slam on the counter will release the chocolate from the pan.  Leave it there for five minutes to warm just a bit.  If it's too cold, the chocolate will chip off and not curl.  Now grab a favorite vegetable peeler and begin shaving curls!

Milk chocolate, because of the high fat content, melts at a lower temperature than dark chocolate.  Body heat is more than sufficient to cause melting.  You'll want to continually flip the bar from one side of the chocolate to the other in the curl-shaving process.  And get a messy hand.  I always start out with wax paper around the chocolate and always end up without it.  It hinders and slows the progress.  I can deal with this chocolate-y hand.

I discovered it's difficult to take photos of one hand doing something with the other holding the camera!   There isn't a tripod here and even if there was, it'd take another month of Sundays discovering the settings on the camera to allow for the photos of both hands involved in the chocolate curling process.

The chocolate has been shaved from one side to the other down to the width where several very wide curls can finish decorating the cake.



                                        

 Here is one last messy hand photo and the remnant of the milk chocolate bar that disappeared.  Some things are just better than others - chocolate is one of those things. 

I'm of the opinion that the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden might have been chocolate covered, chocolate being the biggest temptation since time began.  It makes perfect sense to me.  Why else would Eve have allowed a walking, talking serpent to convince her something she had walked by since Day Six was worth eviction?  That's my spin on it.


Here it is, a chocolate overload cake:  rich chocolate cake, chocolate Bavarian cream filling, chocolate butter cream icing, dark chocolate ganache, and milk chocolate curls.

And one more, just for good measure:

There have been a whole slew of bad weather systems that have torn through the South the past two weeks.  Lives have been lost, homes destroyed, and folks displaced.  If you're a praying sort of person, keep us in your prayers.   We'll 'ppreciate it!