(gentle music) - I have been craving chocolate cream pie lately.

My absolute favorite chocolate cream pie was served at a local restaurant that sadly is no longer around.

Today I'm going to try making it myself.

Fingers crossed that it comes close to what I remember.

So, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and let's make some chocolate cream pie.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music) I thought it'd be a good idea to start with the chocolate custard for our chocolate cream pie because once we get it all finished, it needs to go in the refrigerator, and it needs to set for about three to four hours at least.

So what we have here is 1 1/2 cups of chopped chocolate.

I've got semi-sweet.

I've got milk chocolate in here.

The more milk chocolate you put into your mixture, the sweeter the custard's going to be.

And in that, I am adding two tablespoons of butter.

And then we need a teaspoon or so of just pure vanilla.

We're gonna set this aside, but I just wanted to remind everyone that this is a good time to say, hey, read your recipe all the way through because you need this to be in a big enough bowl that then we're gonna pour our hot mixture into this chocolate.

And the first time I did this, I put it in a bowl, you know, that was probably... I left it in the bowl that was the size of the chopped chocolate, and, ugh, hot liquids spilled all over the place.

It just wasn't big enough.

So there's your tip of the day.

Okay, next up, we need to get the rest of our ingredients mixed together in a sauce pan before we turn the burner on.

We are putting in 1/4 of a cup of cocoa, and what I like to do with cocoa powder is always put it through a little sifter 'cause it always feels like there's lumps in the cocoa, and we don't want any lumps in our custard.

So let's just sift this into the sauce pan.

Now to our cocoa powder we are adding 1/4 of a cup of corn starch.

And I'm gonna go ahead and just sift this too because we don't want any lumpy cornstarch in our custard either.

There we go.

That looks good.

And now, just 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt.

Just give that a little whisk.

(whisk tapping) The last thing we need to add to our cocoa mixture here is a cup and a half of granulated sugar, and we wanna whisk that in as well.

So to that, three egg yolks, a half a cup of heavy cream.

We have a cup here for our full recipe, but we're only gonna start with that half a cup.

And I'm going a little slower than I normally would because, as you guys can see, I am a messy baker.

So we want to keep whisking until everything is incorporated and fairly smooth.

And now we're gonna add the rest of our heavy cream.

Whisk that all in.

And remember, we still haven't turned on our burner yet, so we're getting this all ready prior to putting it onto any heat.

(whisk swishing) Perfect.

Now I am gonna turn on the heat, but while this is heating up, I'm also going to add two cups of whole milk.

So we wanna make sure that you just keep stirring, stirring, stirring because as this is heating up, you don't wanna cook your eggs.

Nobody really wants scrambled eggs in their custard.

And in order for the corn starch and the eggs to help thicken up this delicious chocolate mixture, we need it to get warm.

And we are going to keep stirring.

This is not the time we walk away, guys.

We're gonna keep stirring until this thickens up slightly.

You'll feel it.

I won't be able to really show you with the whisk or with a spatula, but you'll feel it as you're stirring.

And then once it gets to like a simmering, almost boiling point, we're gonna let it go for about a minute.

All right, I think we are ready.

I'm just going to get this off the burner and go on to our next step.

(gentle upbeat music continues) So now we're gonna take our chocolate deliciousness and pour it over our chopped chocolate and butter and vanilla that we had set aside from earlier.

Now this is a little cumbersome, you guys, but I like to put this through a sieve again just in case because I want it to be as smooth as smooth can be for our custard.

And just let that hot mixture melt our chopped chocolate, melt our butter, make sure we get that vanilla that we put in there, incorporate it in as well.

And I'm just gonna keep stirring until everything is all nicely melted and our custard is smooth.

(gentle upbeat music continues) I think we are there.

Oh my gosh, you guys, it smells fabulous.

I'm just gonna cover this with plastic wrap.

I'm going to put the plastic wrap so that it's touching the custard because otherwise it might form a skin, but then put it in the refrigerator.

It's gonna sit there for at least three to four hours.

When it comes out, it's going to be nice and firm and ready for our pie.

(gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music) Onward to our pie dough.

So today we are using all butter in our pie dough, 2 1/2 cups of flour with a teaspoon of salt, and now two sticks of butter that I've chopped up and have put in the freezer so that they are as cold as they can be because with pie crust, we want to make sure that we have everything just staying as chilled as possible so that when it hits that hot oven, the pie dough will become nice and flaky as the steam rises from the butter chunks and from the coldness of the dough itself.

When it hits that hot oven, it just helps your pie crust to become flaky and tender and delicious.

So, (lid snaps) I'm gonna put the lid on first and now just start to incorporate some of the butter.

We want it to be pea size, and that's why I chop it in kind of small cubes so I don't have to process this a whole lot.

There we go.

Can you see the butter is now really a pea size at the most, which is exactly what we want?

Now, we are going to gradually add some buttermilk, which is pretty cold, into our flour and butter mixture.

And the interesting thing is, and I just tried this recipe when I was testing it out for us, the buttermilk actually gives this pie crust just a nice little tang that is delicious against the creamy, sweet, chocolatey filling.

And then it also really helps to flake up your crust.

I think if you haven't tried buttermilk, you should try it.

We're gonna pour it in slowly and pulse as I go.

And we just want to pulse long enough for our dough to come together.

(processor whirring) All right, I think that's good.

But see, I mean, you can still see the little pieces of butter, and we're not fully together yet.

So that's what we're going to do by kneading it just a little bit on the mat.

I'm just using my hands, and we're just getting all of the errant pieces of butter and flour mixed together.

(gentle upbeat music continues) This recipe makes enough for two crusts.

So, I'm just going to cut this in half.

Each one we're gonna form a little disc, and then I'm gonna wrap this in plastic wrap.

I'm gonna do the same with the other half and then into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, if not longer.

And you can actually make up a bunch of pie dough ahead of time.

You can prepare it to this point, stick it in the freezer, and then when you're ready to use it, just put it in the refrigerator.

Let it defrost for a while, and, voila, you have pie dough all ready.

(gentle upbeat music continues) The pie dough has been in the refrigerator for over a half an hour now.

So we're ready to get rolling.

Can you see, we can still see chunks of butter, which is awesome?

That's exactly what we want to see.

Just gonna put a little bit on top there, and we're gonna start rolling.

Just every so often move your pie dough around.

(gentle upbeat music) So we wanna make sure that we've rolled out our pie dough so that it's a little bit larger than the actual size of our pie pan.

And then all we need to do to transfer it over is to very gently roll our pie dough onto our rolling pin and then cover our pan and then kind of reposition it.

So now once our pie dough is in the pan, just make sure that it reaches the edges.

You don't wanna push it or force it because then it's all gonna shrink back up.

And then we can take the edges and just fold them under.

If we have to reposition, we can reposition slightly, folding them under.

(gentle upbeat music continues) And go ahead and do whatever crimping style you like.

But I am just taking my two knuckles here and going in with my other hand, nothing fancy, because on this pie, it's gonna be covered with whipped cream anyway, so I'm not gonna worry about it too much.

There we go.

Now, we need to blind bake this crust.

And blind baking, we do that so that, number one, we don't have a soggy bottom, but also we're going to bake the crust all the way through for our custard filling because we won't need to put it back into the oven like with some fruit pies after we put together our chocolate and our whipped cream and all of that loveliness.

So the best way to blind bake, I have parchment paper here.

And, you know, parchment paper, look, it's great, right?

But it's not the most malleable.

So the easy way to get it to fit better into round things like this pie dough, (parchment paper crinkling) crumple it up, and now it will fit very nicely.

You're not quite fighting with it as much.

Into your dough.

And now we need to weight it down a bit, but I just remembered, you know what?

The other thing that we probably should do before we start our blind baking process is dock our crust.

And it's important for us to dock our crust for this particular pie just because we don't want, like, areas to be puffed up.

And this docking helps to keep the pie dough as flat as possible.

And it's not really... I mean, I'm not going all the way through, so it's not like we're going to have chocolate custard come through little tiny holes in the bottom of our crust.

And we're also gonna go along the sides here a bit.

So now let's put our parchment paper back in.

(parchment paper crinkling) And we need to put some weights onto this parchment paper so it holds the pie dough in place and keeps its shape as it's baking.

So I have here just beans that I've been using, dried beans that I've been using over and over and over again.

They make ceramic pie weights that you can certainly use if that's what you choose.

But I find that these beans really, you know, help to hold the pie shape a little bit better 'cause they're a little bit smaller than some of those ceramic pie weights.

So I'm dumping the whole jar in.

And just spread your beans out to the sides.

Make sure they get into the, like, little areas around the pie dough.

Press it in place.

And because I've had this pie dough out now for a while, I'm actually gonna put it back into the refrigerator and let that butter in the pie dough kind of firm up a little bit.

It'll help to hold its shape.

It'll help for that flakiness.

But in the meantime, though, I might as well get my oven preheated here.

And when that oven is preheated, my pie dough will be nice and chilled again.

(easygoing upbeat music) Our oven is preheated.

Our pie crust has been in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes or so now to get that butter nice and cold again.

It's gonna go into the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes, and then we're gonna check it from there.

(easygoing upbeat music continues) Here it is, our baked pie crest.

We're just gonna set it aside and let it cool.

Have you ever wanted to make chocolate curls?

I know this might be a little bit over the top, and I have to be perfectly honest, they are fiddly, but we are going to make them together.

So let me show you how to do it.

Start with some baker's chocolate.

I have semi-sweet sweet chocolate here that I'm using.

You can use milk chocolate or whatever you prefer.

But I wanted to tell you a little bit about the difference because I've often wondered what's the difference between baker's chocolate that you find in the grocery store in the aisle with all of the baking goods versus just a bar of chocolate that you can buy.

And I learned that, first of all, baker's chocolate has more cocoa butter in it, which then makes it easier to melt, and at the end of the day, it stays a little more shiny.

So that's a win-win for our chocolate curls.

To start with, (chocolate snaps) I'm just breaking up a bar of the baker's chocolate, and I'm gonna stick it in the microwave until it gets melty.

And I don't know if you guys have melted stuff in the microwave before, but chocolate, you can burn chocolate really easily in the microwave.

So I'm just gonna microwave it at 30-second bursts until it's like partially, almost fully melted.

And then, we're just gonna stir, stir, stir, stir, stir.

So let me get started on that.

So this took a minute and a half to get all melty, and I think you can see where you can still see the outline of a few of those little pieces of chocolate.

That's how you wanna pull it out of the microwave because now all we need to do is just stir it, and see, look, magically it melts itself into the rest of the chocolate.

And that way we don't risk getting little burnt spots by doing it in the microwave.

So, all good there.

We're taking a sheet pan, placing it upside down.

And now this is another trick because the melted chocolate, you have to spread it as thin as you can possibly spread it but still leave enough of it so that you can get under it and curl it.

So when I mean fiddly, I mean fiddly here, but let's try it.

So now we need to just let the chocolate set, and the easiest way to do that is putting it in the refrigerator just for a few minutes, like three minutes max.

And then we're gonna see if it's set enough for us to make some curls or if it needs to go back in the refrigerator or if we've set it too much.

So let's see what happens.

All right, here we go.

Let's see.

45-degree angle.

Help it to curl.

(easygoing upbeat music continues) Come on.

Oh, we're gonna get there, you guys.

I feel it.

I feel it.

And we're just gonna help it a little bit more.

All right, well, not the best, but we're gonna keep going.

There's one.

And see, I'm going at my 45-degree angle.

I'm just using just maybe 1/4 of an inch here of my scraper.

And again, I'm just gonna help it to start that curl.

Ooh, yeah, that one worked.

Here we go.

(easygoing upbeat music continues) So I think my chocolate is starting to get a little too warm here for us to make any more beautiful ones.

You get the picture, right?

I'm gonna put this back in the fridge for a few minutes, and then I'm gonna finish it up.

But there you have it.

You decide if you wanna fuss with this.

We'll give you another option when we put together our chocolate cream pie.

It wouldn't be chocolate cream pie without whipped cream on the top, so let's make some whipped cream.

Here I have two cups of heavy whipping cream.

(gentle upbeat music) And I am just gonna get that started a little bit on slow.

(button clicks) (mixer whirring) And to that now that it's a little bit foamy, I'm gonna add a half a cup of confectioner's sugar.

You can adjust based on whether you like your whipped cream less sweet, more sweet.

You decide.

And then I'm also going to add, oh, probably, because I'm just doing what I feel like here, I'm gonna do a tablespoon maybe of vanilla extract.

Again, you adjust to your taste.

You could even probably do some almond extract if you like that flavor.

That would be yummy with chocolate, but today we're using vanilla.

And now I'm just gonna turn the mixer on.

We're gonna let it go until it makes firm peaks.

But remember, we don't want it to go too far because then we start to make butter.

(implement tapping) Oh yeah.

I think we're in good shape here.

Now the fun part, assembly.

Here we have our chilled chocolate custard.

Ooh, it looks perfect.

So all we're gonna do is start to layer it in.

Think just a little bit more.

(gentle upbeat music continues) Beautiful.

Next up is our whipped cream.

We are using an open-star tip for our whipped cream swirls.

We're just gonna start in the center and make little rosettes all the way around.

(gentle upbeat music continues) This looks beautiful.

We could use those chocolate curls that we kind of made before, or we could grate some chocolate on top.

That would be pretty.

Or we could just leave it exactly as it is.

But before we go here, you notice that I have some of this delicious chocolate custard left over.

Let me show you a delicious and easy thing to do with this leftover custard.

Now this custard is delicious as is, but we also have a little bit of whipped cream left over here.

I tried to reserve about a cup of the whipped cream that we made in here.

All I'm gonna do is take equal bits of our custard, put it into our whipped cream, because the whipped cream is gonna make it light.

Just gonna add a little bit more there.

Just give that a good mix.

I don't wanna be too strong-armed with it because I wanna keep the whipped cream as light and fluffy as I can.

But once it gets incorporated, you are going to have the most delicious mousse ever.

Look at that.

And I have just a fun, little old-fashioned martini glass here.

(gentle upbeat music continues) Looking good.

And I also purposefully left a little extra whipped cream here.

(gentle upbeat music continues) Mm, goodness, this can be either a treat for yourself or for any of your guests.

There you have it, chocolate cream pie, chocolate mousse.

I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out, and although I'm still sad that the local restaurant where I originally fell in love with chocolate cream pie is no longer around, I'm excited to think that I can still conjure up some of those long-ago memories with each bite of this homemade version.

I hope you enjoyed watching, and I can't wait to see you again soon.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues)