Experiment 18 - Chocolate Stout Silk Pie aka Guinness Chocolate Pie

Ingredients list

I'm not going to make any excuses, I'll just report once again that spring time keeps me busy outside the house.  Thus I didn't make this pie until Monday night, and it requires sitting in the refrigerator overnight, and then last night I went to see The Avengers, and by the time I got home, eating pie was in the cards, writing about it was not.

Simple prep, especially since I chose to use a pre-made crust crust.  I even chose a chocolate crust instead of plain graham cracker, because that's how I roll.

Nevertheless, I'll go ahead and transcribe the first part.  I'm not so concerned with any copyright issues on this one, since it came from email.

Preheat oven to 350.  Add melted butter to crushed graham crackers and mix until well blended.  Using fingers, press crust mixture into bottom and up the sides of a pie pan.  Bake crust for about 6 minutes until set.  (You can alternatively use a ready made graham cracker crust.)

[as I did]

For the filling....

Place chocolate, marshmallows and salt in a blender.  Blend until well mixed and chocolate is finely ground.

I have to admit, this part caused some problems.  I have mistreated my blender in many ways over the years, but it has always come through for me.  I fear this was almost too much, as the chocolate caked up around the bottom and I smelled burning.  I think a food processor would be the better appliance in this case.  In any event, I used some spatulas and some knives to mix things up and got things mostly mixed up.

Moving on .... in two separate saucepans (in order to prevent curdling), heat stout and evaporated milk until very hot, but not boiling.

Pour stout and milk into blender and blenf for one minute.  Add vanilla and creme de cacao and blend.  Pour into the crust and refrigerate overnight.

The very hot liquids took care of melting both the chocolate and marshmallows, so despite the issues with the blender, everything worked out fine.

If you hadn't figured it out from before, the creme de cacao was the ingredient that I found a substitute for.  SInce the recipe only calls for one tablespoon, I just couldn't see buying even the smallest bottle of CdC at the ABC store, so instead I chose to pick up a tiny bottle of Godiva chocolate liquer from the selection of miniatures.  And I still have leftovers.

(Sorry about the grainy photos.  The flash in my pocket size camera has died.  It's been tossed around and dropped and performed really well for 8 years, so I can't complain too much.  Next week I'll use my DSLR or phone.)

Verdict: It's GREEEEEAAAAAT.  Maybe just a tad too sweet, if there is such a thing.  Perhaps going with regular graham cracker crust instead of chocolate would help.

Lessons Learned - try to use the right appliance, despite what the recipe says.
Tools needed - nothing new this week.
Skills needed - nothing new this week.