Chocolate nuts or How NOT to bake a choc pecan pie

I am nuts about chocolate. I am chocolate about nuts? :P

Anyway, the combination is infallible. I recently perfected my chocolate pecan pie recipe. Obviously the first kitchen toil was a minor disaster due to the fact that I am loathe to follow recipes without tweaking and was in a flustered rush to get to a friends Yule celebration so chaos was sure to ensue. The end result was demolished before I could lay claim to seconds so it must have worked.

The second attempt I mentioned yesterday. I was calm and not in a hurry and everything worked out perfectly. No pics of mine, unfortunately, but will get one next time :-) This recipe has replaced my quick and easy baked cheese cake. I plan to add some choc chips to the filling next time.

How NOT to bake a chocolate pecan pie! (a *trixi caveat in italics) (psssssst, it's actually a great recipe, if you heed my warnings ;-) For the choc base - weigh out/measure:

• 175 g cake flour
  
• 40 g icing sugar
• 27 g cocoa powder
• 40 g ground almonds
• 140 g 'frozen' unsalted butter (ideally) - I only had salted so leave out the salt
• 1/2 tsp salt
• separate one egg - use yolk for base (keep white for filling)
  
• 2-3 tsp ice water

1. In a large bowl, sift flour, icing sugar cocoa.
(do not ask your boyfriend to add in the unsifted icing sugar)

2. Add almonds, salt. Grate frozen butter and add to mix, it makes it easier to mix in. Or cut up into little squares if you have a food processor. Rub in until you form 'crumbs'. (do not attempt to grate butter @ room temp. It's just messy)

3. Form a well in center of mix, add in egg yolk. Work into mix. Add a tbs of ice water at a time, to from a soft, non-sticky dough. (first attempt was on a hot day so butter melted a bit forming a dough with just the egg yolk and 1 tbs water, 2nd time was cold and took about 4-5 tbs ice water)
4. Wrap in clingwrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
(you can start the filling now if pressed for time) (Again, this was more critical on the warmer day when dough was extra soft)

5. Line a loose bottomed pie pan with a round of grease proof paper and spray/butter the fluted edges. (or not, if you want the pie to stick to the tin and make it impossible to cut without breaking up the slice of pie)

6. Roll out dough on a piece of grease proof paper. Turnover onto lined pie pan. Press in to shape. Cut off excess crust by pressing against fluted edges. lift paper and prick base. Bake blind for 10 minutes @ 200 degrees celcius. I use dried beans. (or you can press dough in to pie pan unevenly, pour dry beans directly onto shortcrust and bake to embed beans :P Also, add soe many beans that heat cannot reach the base.) Ok, so that was the difficult part. Once it's done, start cooling your oven down to 150 degrees celcius.

Filling:

• 125 g light brown sugar
• 75 g butter
• 60 ml tightly packed treacle sugar
• 60 ml golden syrup
• 2 whole eggs plus the leftover egg white
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 150 g pecan nuts
• 50 g sultanas (golden raisins)

1. On low heat, stirring frequently, melt butter, sugars and syrup.

2. When homogenous syrup is formed, cool for about 5 minutes (to prevent cooking egg when added).

3. Then add in eggs and vanilla essence. Stir well until egg is incorporated.

4. Add in pecan nuts and raisins. Mix gently.

5. Pour into base 6. Bake for 45-60 minutes @ 150 degrees celcius. (I reccomend placing pie pan onto another tray as leakage/overspill might occur, and burnt sugar at the bottom of your oven is not much fun)


It received the supreme complement of tasting better than Woollies pecan pie! ;-)

A pic of someone else's pecan pie: Desert Candy

Mine looked just as good ;-)

Friendly libraries

I visited one of my super friendlies this weekend to belatedly celebrate a birthday with her last Saturday (just as the cold front hit). To compensate for the fact that I forgot (well, technically, I did not forget, I just thunk it was 20 day later :P) , I made a 2nd time lucky chocolate pecan pie and (with help from my kitchen elf) a thai green curry, which complemented my friends veg cannelloni very nicely ;-) It did, I tell you! Well, I have a great deal of respect for her skill and patience and I watched in ravenous awe as she filled the last few pasta tubes with yumminess. Not something I'll be doing anytime soon.

I will post the chocolate(base) pecan pie recipe I adapted (from 500 chocolate delights ) later, but here's the curry for now.

The cooking was accomplished by asking my faithful kitchen elf (actually, he's more of a wizard and his cooking skills complement mine ;-) to get things going while I handled the aftermath of my violet black purple hair dye escapades and forced my (in need of a haircut) tresses into order with the clumsy use of my GHD (if only results were about the tool and not my handling of it, sigh). Anyway, the food was delicious and my hair looked ok.

*Trixified Thai Green Curry

• about 6-8 skinless chicken thighs and drumsticks
• 1 tin lite coconut milk
• 1/2 finely chopped onion
• 1-2 pieces of cinnamon bark
• 4 dried lime leaves
• 2-3 tbs green curry paste
  
• 1 tsp crushed cumin/jeera
• 1tsp crushed coriander/dhania
• a thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and finely slivered
• 1/2 tsp ginger and garlic paste
• julienned carrots, baby marrow, red/yellow/green peppers
  
• salt
• sugar (to temper)
  

Saute onions, cinnamon stick, lime leaves on low heat until golden. Add chicken and rest of spices and pastes and brown briefly, then add coconut milk and about 1/2 cup of water and cook on medium heat for 10 minutes. Add veg/ginger and cook until just tender. Serve with basmati rice, garnish with fresh coriander. The lemongrass I had in the fridge did not look as healthy as it did when I bought it else that would have gone in too.

While we were chinwagging after eating the yummies, the conversation drifted towards blogging, since my birthday friendly had read mine on her cellphone. I was inspired to give blogging another go after another friend (also at supper) started hers (Memento Vivere).

Our hostess, being the super insightful, fabulous friendly that she is, went to scour her bookshelves for treats I would appreciate. This is what I got to borrow from her library:

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell - because of my blog, a book about a blogger who cooks her way through a Julia Child cookbook and her experience of life, love and a book deal. I can dream, can't I?

The Patron Saint of Plagues by Barth Anderson - I had the flu earlier in the week (nope, not the flying pigs virus type) and had been talking about The Zombie Diaries which documents a similar sounding outbreak...

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan - coz of my review of Kiln People; this is along similar lines (the copy I loaned has a more appealing cover, but the title does not appear on it)

I will review after I read them, so watch this space ;-)

P.S. I read slowly :P