Chocolate Custard Pie with the Easiest Pastry Crust Ever

This is one of the recipes that reinvigorated my love affaire with baking. I'd been away at university for the last four years, and my kitchen skills had suffered. But I'd been talking with some American friends, and they were waxing lyrical about how fantastic sweet pies were. Here in New Zealand, pie means pastry with meat in it, so the concept was unusual but sounded yummy. As I am a chocolate lover, I decided that was to be my flavour and set out to find a suitable recipe. It scared me; they all seemed so fancy and custard filled. What if the custard didn't cook, or it curdled, or... there was a long list. But really? It was so much easier than I'd anticipated and my confidence was boosted immeasurably.

This pie is delicious, and made with milk chocolate, so the chocolate flavour is not really overwhelming. Which is to say, you won't feel like you're going to die of chocolate over load by the end of it. If, however, you do desire such a delicious fate, go ahead and use a chocolate with a high cocoa percentage.

It was my father's birthday today (52!), so I thought we should have a yummy dessert, which is why this delicious recipe is making it's debut tonight.


The dessert section of my much loved recipe book.

Easiest Pastry Crust Ever:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa
100g salted, melted butter*
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg yolk

*I always use salted butter in my cooking; unless I stipulate otherwise, assume it's salted.

1. In a bowl combine everything. Make sure that your melted butter does not touch the yolk initially. You don't want a cooked yolk.

2. With an electric mixer, combine.

3. You can kneed and roll this pastry if you like, but I never, ever do. Instead I press it into a flan tin (one where the bottom lifts out if pushed from underneath). Just keep adding little handfuls of the pastry mix and press until the whole tin is covered (sides included). Make sure your tin is well buttered.


See the loose stuff around the edge? Just press it down, so that it looks like the stuff in the middle.


Buttered up.

5. Cover in baking paper and then fill with baking beans* to weight down. Bake for ten minutes at 180 degrees celcius, just long enough to partially bake the crust, but not long enough so that it will burn when you cook the custard filling.


Here we are all ready to go into the oven. It'll look pretty much the same when it comes out.


With the beans. I always like to make sure the baking paper covers the edges, as they are the most likely to burn/cook faster.

6. Remove and let cool for ten minutes, then fill with custard and pop back in the oven for 10 - 20 minutes.

* I use haricott beans. Rice works, too. Anything that you don't ever want to cook again, and will not burn when in the oven.

Chocolate Custard Filling:

270g milk chocolate
375mls heavy cream
2 eggs
1 egg yolk

1. In a saucepan slowly heat the cream and chocolate. Do not let it boil; you really just want enough heat to melt the chocolate, so that you can combine the two.

2. Set aside to cool to tepid (and make your crust).

3. Once the mixture is tepid, whisk in your eggs and egg yolk. Now you can pour the mixture into your prepared pastry case, and bake for 10-20 minutes at 180 degrees celcius. In order to tell if the custard has set, touch it gently. If you feel some resistence to your touch, it is ready. There should be some jiggle to it, but nothing that would indicate that it is still liquidly inside. It will not set to solid.


All cooked up and cooling.

4. When cooled, dust with lots of icing sugar and serve with a dollop of cream




Does that not look amazing? It's all creamy and velvet soft and yummy in there.

Extra Chocolate Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

I am cursed with need to bake at obscure times, like at eight pm after I got home from work. Usually when I find something that looks like fun to try. In this case, it was red velvet cupcakes. Now, in New Zealand, red velvet cake is about as common as flying pigs. The first three people I informed of my current baking mission just stared at me as if I was mad; clearly trying to understand why I sought to combine cake and furry fabric. And I managed to do it! No, not really.

This is the first time I've made red velvet cake of any sort, so I really had no idea what I was in for. Turns out, something surprisingly easy. These wee cakes take only just a little more effort than your average vanilla cupcakes, and they are amazingly delicious. The flavour is subtly chocolately, and the cake itself is silky soft and slightly dense in texture. Just perfect for those of you who aren't huge fans the traditional slightly-dry, air-light cupcake.

Now, I can't say I'm a huge fan of cream cheese icing as I prefer my icing to do as I tell it. However, the flavour really suits the subtleness of the cake, so I wouldn't go so far as to recommend not using it at all. I think a traditional all-sugar frosting would be too overwhelming for the delicate flavour of the cake. So next time I whip these cakes up (and there will be a next time), I will probably reduce the amount of cream cheese I use, so that the flavour is still there, but so that there is still a decent amount of structure to the frosting.

The inspiration from the recipe came from here. Unfortunately my first time efforts don't look as great as Michelle's, but I am all for that slightly rustic look to my cooking. That's what I tell myself, at least.

Without further ado!

Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe:

Makes 12 average sized cupcakes, or 24 small cupcakes.

2/3c Oil (vegetable or cooking)
3/4c Sugar
1 egg
2tbsp red food colouring*
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2c buttermilk**
1c flour
1/3c cocoa***
1/2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp baking powder
3/4tsp white vinegar
*You could easily get away with more if you wanted a deeper red colour.
**If you don't have butter milk, you can make your own with 2tsp of lemon juice to half a cup of milk, and let it sit for 15 minutes so that it can curdle.
***I wanted a stronger chocolate flavour (because I'm a chocaholic), so I used 1/2c instead. Of course, this does make the cake darker, so you don't get that fabulous red colour.

Method:


Dump your oil and sugar into a bowl, and mix on a low speed.


Next, add your egg, red food colouring and vanilla extrat.


Mix (still on low, so as not to splatter the liquidly mixture)


Add your buttermilk, flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder.


Mix (you can turn the speed up here, but I didn't bother)


Line your muffin pans with cupcake liners. I made 24 smaller cupcakes, because I find they are a much more forgiving serving size, plus they look totally cute. As you can see, I use silicone bake ware. There are only a few things I use silicone for; muffins and Bundt cakes. I just can't be bothered with attempting to coax cakes out of tricky moulds.


Pop them into your preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius, cooking them until they bounce back from a touch, or a skewer/toothpick comes out clean. Because they are a little denser than traditional cupcakes, they take a bit longer.


Here they are in all their freshly bake beauty! Yummmm.

Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe:
115g cream cheese*
115g butter
1 1/2tsp vanilla extract**
1-2c icing sugar (/powdered sugar/confectioners’ sugar - whatever you want to call it!)

*Remember earlier? When I said I'd probably cut the cream cheese down? Apply here.
**Extract is different to essence. It's the real stuff. If you can, get the stuff with the seed pods included (because ohmygod, they are amazing). Or alternatively you can do what Michelle has done, and use real vanilla seeds, and vanilla essence.

Method:


Weigh out your cream cheese (aren't these fantastic retro scales? They are my faaavourite Christmas present, and even though I have electric scales that measure in one gram increments, I always, always, always use these).


Then weigh out your butter (I just weighed the cream cheese, then tossed in enough butter so that the needle on the scales doubled - because you need the same amount for each ingredient).


Toss both cream cheese and butter in a bowl, and you vanilla extract. I added a few drops of red food colouring here, because I wanted a soft pink icing. If you look really closely, you can see the vanilla seeds. Mmmm.


Cream the ingredients until they are evenly mixed together and nice and fluffy.


Then add your icing sugar and mix. I would recommend that you add one cup first, then slowly add more until you get a texture you're happy with. If it ends up too thick, just add a few drops of milk. Be careful not to add to much, as we know what liquid can do to icing sugar!


Finally, put the icing in a piping bag, and ice away!

And these are the delicious results!



Inside (see how mine are darker than the traditional red velvet cake?).