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Hi everyone, I'm Claire Safids. Welcome to my home kitchen. Today I'm showing you kind of a retro classic. It is a chocolate mering pie. I feel like people know the lemon mering pie better, but you can really top any custard pie with mering. So today I'm showing you a super smooth, silky chocolatey filling, kind of like a cousin to a chocolate pudding. It's really good because you have a sweet meringue and like a more bittersweet chocolate filling. The filling is super silky and delicious.
It's like the best diner dessert. Kids will like it, but it's also a little adult at the same time. There is this pastry chef based in LA named Hannah Ziskin. She and her husband run Quarter Sheets, which is like a pizza place, pizza, wine, cake, I think. And I went there when I was in LA two years ago, because I just think she's amazing and her cakes are incredible. and they make a chocolate cream pie and I would see pictures of it online and it just looked so luscious and delicious. So, it just kind of made me excited about making it myself. So, I'm doing a filling that is based on the chocolate pudding that I have in what's for dessert which I've made in an episode. So, this is sort of a modified version of that. It has a really high
proportion of bar chocolate in it, like chopped chocolate rather than cocoa powder. And that's because that is going to help me achieve this nice slicable texture, this nice set on the pudding. And then because we have all of these yolks that are going into the pudding, I have the whites that are going into the meringue. So, I love a recipe where it's like there's no waste. I'm using everything like I'm not having anything left over. There's just a kind of nice like symmetry to it in that way. This recipe uses a pastry base. So, I have one like a single pie dough that I already made that's chilled and ready to go. For the pudding, I have 7 oz of 72% bar chocolate chopped. And I'll talk
about why it has to be 72. Milk, kosher salt, I have brown sugar, and I'm doing a brown sugar mering. So, I have brown sugar in two places. Then some molted milk powder. I'm doing a molted pudding cuz like malt and chocolate so good together. Plus the brown sugar. Some cornstarch. Some butter. I have five egg yolks plus one whole egg. So, I'm using my Vital Farms large eggs. Also, some vanilla goes into the pudding. For the meringue, I have more brown sugar, the five whites that I separated from the five yolks that are going into the pudding, plus a little extra vanilla and salt. And then I just have a little bench flour for rolling out my pie dough. Special equipment for the pie itself, you'll need a pie plate. So, I
have a glass 9in pie plate right here, not deep dish. Then for the pudding, I'm going to use a saucepan, a couple of bowls, and for the meringue, I don't have it out, but I'm going to use my stand mixer. So, I'm going to grab that with the whisk attachment, and then you'll need a rolling pin, a strainer, other little stuff, but that's basically it. So, the first thing I'm going to do is get my pie crust back out of the fridge. I stuck it in there so it didn't warm up too much. I'm going to clear everything off, and we're going to start with doing our pie crust in our pie plate. Before I get into the recipe, I want to thank our friends at Vital Farms for sponsoring the episode. Everyone knows
that I keep chickens at home, but sometimes the chickens like take a little break and go on a vacation and I need to supplement with store-bought eggs because we go through a ton of eggs around here. We eat them for breakfast and lunch. I bake with them all the time. So, when I buy supermarket eggs, I buy only Vital Farms. I love them because I know how important it is for chickens to run around and touch grass and be able to peck and move freely. And Vital Farms works with over 600 farms, all of which are committed to pasture-raising their hens. And I know they're high quality because like my eggs for my chickens at home, the shells are hard, the yolks are super orange,
and they perform beautifully in all of my baked goods. They have a really, really cool traceability feature where the name of the farm is printed on the side of the box. You can go scan the QR code, type in the name of your farm, and see a video feed of all the beautiful hens. It's so cool. So, we got Dogwood Hollow. Oh my gosh, the hens. This really makes me happy cuz I know having chickens, I know they're meant to run around. Like they're animals. They need space. And these hens, they look very happy just pecking around. It's funny when you have chickens, you're like, you can tell if they're happy or not. Today, I'm using the eggs to make my chocolate mering pie. The yolks go into the
pudding, the whites go into the meringue, but also I'm just eating these every morning for breakfast. Hardboiled eggs, egg salad. We eat a lot of eggs. So, I want to thank Vital Farms. And let's get back to the recipe. So, I have my oven preheating. It is at 425. So, we are going to bake this crust without any filling in it. I have a couple different kinds of pie weights, but it's some type of dried bean or rice. So, I have just some rice right here. I have a little extra flour for rolling out. And this is my standard single crust pi dough. And the only thing that I did in this case is I worked the butter in a little bit more finely than I maybe would have in the past for something really flaky. And that's just because I
want a little bit more of like a more tender uniform texture for a cream pie than like a flaky texture like I would for a fruit pie. And then I also have a half sheet here because I'm going to bake the crust on that. So, I'm going to roll this out. And we're going to bake this in a few different stages. We're going to bake it first with the pie weights in it at a higher temp, which is why I have it on 425. And then we're going to bake it again at a lower temp without the pie weights. So, I often will beat the crust like this with the rolling pin. I'm not smashing it really hard. I'm just kind of almost letting the rolling pin like bounce off of it. And this is just going to help to soften the dough so it's rollable, but without
letting the butter warm up too much. And I think for this pie, I'm going to do just a classic kind of wavy crimp around the edge, but you could finish it in whatever way you like. And I'm adding more flour just to prevent sticking. And then no, no more than that. So, I want to roll this out to about an eighth of an inch, maybe slightly thicker, but pretty thin. And I do like for a cream pie, I do like a pastry crust rather than a cookie crumb crust or like a graham cracker crust. And that's just because it's it's sturdier. But you could do like a crumb crust if you like. Just know that you're not it's going to be harder to get like a nice clean slice out of it. Always keep the crust moving as you're rolling out. And
that's because you don't want it to start to stick to the surface. It's just going to affect how it rolls out and it's going to want to shrink back. You just want to keep it moving. This single crust pio dough, I have the recipe I have a recipe in dessert person that's the single crust and then in what's for dessert I have a double. Slightly different methods but same you know basic idea. So this is the single from dessert person. It's a cup and a half of flour to 10 tablespoons of butter. So this makes a pretty generous sized crust for just a 9 in pie plate. And that means you have some wiggle room when it comes to forming your border or it just maybe you're not rolling it super evenly like it doesn't you know
you have some uh you have some extra to work with. So, this is about I'm at about a 13inch round. And I'm going to get it into my pie plate. I'm just going to do one final little roll. And if it's getting a little sticky, if it's getting really sticky, put it back in the fridge. But just to help you maneuver it, I have uh my bench scraper right here. So now there's a lot of ways that you can get your pie crust into the pie plate, but I like to just kind of roll it. So I'm going to bring this here. Then trying to center it as best you can, leaving an overhang. You're going to unroll it onto your pie plate. And now we're done with the rolling pin. So one thing that's important when with
any kind of pastry crust is that when you're fitting it into your pan or your plate, let it slump down. Don't stretch it. like don't sort of if there's a gap between this is the crust and this is your plate, don't stretch it down like let it pull itself into and fill in that space. So I'm kind of lifting up the edges and letting it fall down into that space between the bottom and the sides. And then I like to press really firmly. It's the contact between the dough and the pie plate that's going to help it brown. So you don't want like big air pockets if you can help it. All right. So now I'm going to grab a pair of scissors. And I'm going to trim all the way around. I'm going to leave about a half
inch of overhang. And now I'm going to take my fingertips and tuck that excess underneath itself all the way around. So that half inch of excess is just going to get tucked right inside the lip of the pie plate. So now I have this border that has this double thickness of dough. And I like to go back in. This helps to by sort of pressing everything up against the lip. Again, I think that this helps to even out that edge where some in some areas it might be a little thicker, some areas it might be a little bit thinner. So I'm sort of pressing it back against the side of the pie plate and along the rim. And now I'm going to go in and crimp.
Now this is where you could do like any number of kind of decorative borders. You could use like the times of a fork and press it down. Sometimes people do like a cool like little riged texture with the spoon. Um, but you need to thin it out somehow because everything is a single layer except for this border. I'd like to do a wider crimp. And when I am doing this, where my thumb and forefinger are on my right hand, I am pressing away from the center of the pie plate. And as I'm pressing, I'm also pressing down a little bit. And that is to anchor these crimps to the edge of the pie plate. And that's going to help to prevent lots of like shrinking and slumping. So, I'm pressing down a little bit. See
along the edge. All right. So, I have my crimped edge. I do like to go back in and just give it a little definition. So, I'll kind of ensure that it's really well anchored to the rim of the pie plate. If I see a piece that seems a little bit thicker, I can go ahead and pinch it and thin it out a little bit. And this also sort of exaggerates that crimp because what happens with pio when you bake it, it will lose a lot of this definition because it's gonna have a kind of puffing. The scraps, keep them and bake them with a little cinnamon sugar. That's your little treat, your little snack. So, it's a little warm in the kitchen.
I've had this pio dough out for a little while. It's ready to bake, but I'm going to chill it first because I want that butter to solidify. I want the whole thing to harden and set. Uh, and that's just going to give me a better, it's a better bake, a better puffing, a better set. So, I'm going to get this into the freezer. You don't have to cover it. So, maybe like a 10-minute rest in the freezer, and then we're going to start that baking with the pie weights. So, my oven is on 425. I have my half sheet tray, a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil. If you only have regular aluminum foil, use two and double them up. And I have my pie weight. So I'm going to grab my crust, which is cold.
So now I'm going to take my foil and press it into my crust. And because it's nice and solid, I'm not going to mess up my crimp or anything. So go ahead and press it well into the bottom. And I actually like to kind of gently tent it over the edge. Helps everything to bake a little bit more evenly. Then the pie weights go in. Again, you can use dried beans. There is like a product called pie weights that are sometimes like little ceramic beads. I don't really like those. These are expensive and I like to use a lot of pie weights. So, I'm going to dump this in. kind of press it into the shape of the pie plate. And now this is going to go in the oven. Basically, I want the edge,
that crimped edge to look set and baked. It can be still like a little pale, but that's going to take around 20 to 25 minutes. And then I'll show you what that looks like. And then we're going to take the pie weights out, which is why you want heavy duty foil. And then we're going to bake it again until it's like fully cooked all the way through. So 425 the first time in with the pie weights. 425 for 20 to 25 minutes. And we're just going to peek under the edge to see how it's doing. It's starting to smell buttery and a little toasty in here. So the crust has been in for about 25 minutes.
I'm going to pull it out and we're going to remove the pie weights. And then I'm also going to reduce the oven top. This is super important. So I'm now switching it to 325. 3255. be very careful because it's super hot. So now my oven is on 325. We're going to put this back in for a second bake once we remove the pie weights. So this is where the heavy duty foil comes in handy. I like to gather up all of the edges. One great thing about foil, aluminum is such an amazing heat conductor that it cools down instantly. So it's like I can touch the edges of the foil. I'm going to bundle it up and lift it out.
Okay. And now this is going to go back in. You see how the bottom is wet? Like the edge of the crust is kind of is dry and a little golden, but the bottom is still wet. So, we want to put this back in until I get nice even golden brown all along this bottom. Like, we want to cook it all the way through. And the reason I'm putting it back in at 325 is because I don't want to get a lot of shrinkage. There's still all this moisture in here and at a high temp I'm going to cause this like contraction of the dough. And so by putting at 325 it bakes a little more low and slow. I don't get as much shrinkage. So this is going to go back
in until again I see that golden brown all across the bottom. Another 25 minutes or so. Would you cover the edges if it's too toasty? I don't think it's going to get too dark. So I'm going to go ahead and leave it. This edge is a little dark. So you can put like a little collar of foil like that. But I think it's fine. A heat shield. little heat shield. Yeah. So, I'm going to stick this back in. That's going to go until it's golden brown everywhere across the bottom because again, fully baked. It's not like going to It is going to go back
in the oven, but the crust is not going to continue to bake. So, another 25 minutes or so. Go by the color. The crust has been in for 23 minutes. I just took a peek at it. It's looking really good. So, I'm going to take it out and we're going to let it start to cool off. Okay. So, this looks beautiful. It's nice and golden brown across the bottom. Take this off. It shrunk a little bit, but not much. It still has those nice high sides. This is always the sign of a well-baked pie crust. See how I can move it around the pie plate. So, this is done, ready to go. I'm going to now pivot to my filling. And basically the filling for a chocolate cream pie is like a pretty stiff thick chocolate
pudding. You will need a couple of bowls for this. In addition to your saucepan, I'm going to start with my milk. This is 2 and 3/4 cups of whole milk. This is going to go into my saucepan. To this, I'm going to add salt. This is 2 teaspoon of diamond crystal kosher. If you're using Morton, the other common brand, use half the amount. But it requires a good amount of salt to really emphasize the flavor of the chocolate. Then to that, I'm going to add half of my sugar. So this is 2/3 of a cup of light brown sugar. I'm using brown sugar because I like the kind of molassesy flavor against the chocolate.
So this part you can eyeball. About half of it in with the milk. The other half is going to go into my smaller of the two bowls. I'm also going to add vanilla paste. I'm using paste. If you're using extract at home, you can, but you would add it at the end. But I'm going to add my paste because it has seeds in it, and I'm going to have those seeds kind of infuse the milk. So, two teaspoons. I'm going to turn this on and have my milk start to slowly heat up. So that's going to come up to sort of a gentle simmer. Then to my bowl with the brown sugar, I'm going to add 1/4 cup of molted milk
powder. So this, as I said, this is a molted chocolate pudding. So I'm going to add also 1/4 cup of corn starch, the main thickening power. The molted milk powder also contains starch, so it does have a thickening effect as well. So I'm going to whisk together the sugar and the molted milk powder and the cornstarch. Try to eliminate any lumps. You can kind of break the lumps up with your fingertips if you need to. So, I'm going to move this bowl here. And then in my larger bowl, I'm going to add my chocolate. So, this is 7 oz of 72% chocolate. This is a dark chocolate. And the reason I'm calling for 72% is you want something that has a high percentage of like of co cocoa solids basically. So, anything over 70. I
wouldn't use anything under 70 because that means that there's a higher proportion of sugar in that volume of chocolate and the whole thing will be too sweet. So use around 72%. Don't go below 70. And the reason I'm using all bar chocolate and not cocoa. Often in a chocolate pudding I'll add cocoa powder. And that's because it's like it gives you this intense chocolate flavor and a little bit of bitterness that's really a nice balance. But I'm not using cocoa because I want to use I want to take advantage of the texture of bar chocolate which has cocoa butter in it which is solid at room temperature. And that solid texture is going to contribute to the set of the pudding and help me to achieve a filling
that is like slicable and thick but not overly starchy if that makes sense. So when the whole thing cools down that cocoa butter is going to solidify and it's going to help it to set. Ditto butter fat. So, I'm adding some butter as well. This is four tablespoons. The butter, same thing. It's a fat that when it's cold is solid, and that is also going to help give it a slicable texture, but not make it overly starchy. I could just put a ton of corn starch in it and make it really thick that way. But I prefer I think you got a better texture. You get a more silky texture of the pudding when that set comes from fat, basically. So, my milk mixture is getting warm. It's
starting to release a little bit of steam. So, I'm going to place my strainer over my bowl of butter and chocolate. And set that aside. This mixture is warm. It's kind of just under a simmer. So, now that this mixture is hot, I'm going to add my eggs to that sugar and starch mixture. This is five yolks plus one whole egg. And I separated the yolks from the whites and the whites I have for the mering topping. So the eggs are going to go in. You don't want to add the eggs to the starch and sugar mixture too early. You want to wait until your milk mixture is hot and that's just because you will basically get the egg will start to harden and then it will never kind of dissolve and smooth out again. So I'm going to take my eggs and
whisk it into this mixture. This step in any kind of custard making which pudding is a form of custard a stirred custard and in most methods of custard making you do this step which is called blanching the eggs and the word blanching comes from it's like a translation of the f of the French like to blanchier which basically means like to whiten or lighten and that's because we're going to whisk this until the eggs are kind of lightened in color and again don't worry if you have any tiny little lumps like this is actually pretty smooth but if you if your brown sugar's kind of cold and hard and you have lumps, you're going to strain it. So, don't stress too hard about that. We've we've whisked this
really well. Now, I'm going to do a step called tempering. We're going to take some of our hot milk mixture, slowly pour it into the eggs, whisking constantly. That's going to raise the temperature of the eggs gently so that when I transfer everything back to the saucepan, I don't end up kind of like shocking the eggs and possibly cooking some of them. That would not be good. What we're going to do is just slowly pour this in while whisking. Same technique for like creème glaze or an ice cream base. So many custards start this way. So once I've poured about 2/3 of the milk mixture in, I can stop there.
And now whisk this really well. And I'm going to scrape this mixture back into my saucepan. So now we have that egg, dairy, sugar, starch mixture back on our heat and we're going to cook this into our pudding. And again, we don't cook it with the chocolate in it. The chocolate gets added after. Chocolate is a super temperature sensitive ingredient, so we're not cooking the chocolate in here. If I was using cocoa powder, I could add it and have it be here. But basically, we cook this into a pudding and then it gets poured over the chocolate and butter and they kind of gently melt. So, I'm whisking constantly. And this I'm going to bring up to a boil. So, I really need this to visibly boil and
bubble. And that's going to guarantee that the cornstarch has it like reached its full thickening effect. So, I can feel it starting to thicken. It's holding the marks of the whisk. It's also kind of absorbing like the foam that was on the surface. And I could just starting to see some bubbles. So you can stop whisking for a couple seconds and observe the bubbling that's taking place. And you want to whisk constantly because you just want to make sure that you're moving it around so you're not scorching any of the mixture on the bottom. I just killed the heat and now we're going to immediately take it off and pour it through our strainer. And it is the heat in the pudding that's going to gently melt the butter and the
chocolate. I'm going to scrape all of that in. So, I'm going to save my whisk and I'm just going to stir the pudding through the sie to catch any solids. It's going to catch any bits of egg. You know, like egg always has like a little bit of solid pieces in it or any bits of egg that cooked while I was stirring. any lumps of sugar, stuff like that, or starch. So, I'm gonna let this sit for maybe 30 seconds to a minute and just allow the heat to fully melt the chocolate and the butter. And then we're going to stir it and it's going to transform into this like incredibly luscious pudding. All right, I'm going to I think I can stir it. So silky, so chocolatey. And we have our pie crust ready to go. It is still warm.
Is it better if it's fully cooled? Yeah, but warm is fine. So, now we're going to pour this into our pie. And the reason we're pouring it in hot is because you're going to get a much smoother texture when you pour it in hot cuz it's still kind of fluid. If you were to let it set and get cold, you could do it that way and then fill it. But this whole operation works better actually with a warm filling. So, I'm going to scrape this into our prepared pie plate. This is going to go in and we're going to fill it up to the top. The recipe makes around a quart of chocolate pudding. How much you can fit in will depend on how much your you had like how much slump you had in your pie crust. I never like get upset if I have
a little leftover cuz like that's just your snack. So now I'm going to smooth the surface. I probably have maybe like a scant half cup left over. So I'm going to smooth the surface and we're going to go right into making our mering topping. And by the way, I still have my oven on. But just to prevent a skin from forming, which sometimes happens and almost always happens with pudding, I'm going to put some plastic over the surface, and it's just going to hang out there while we make the meringue. So, I'm just gently pressing it onto the actual surface of the pudding. Okay, so this is going to hang out. Uh, I'm going to get my extra pudding in like a little cup to have later. And then I still have my burner because we're going to make a
Swiss mering topping. We are going to bake it. So, I'm going to put my oven back on 425, so like a high temp to brown the meringue. And I'm going to use um brown sugar. We're going to make a brown sugar Swiss mering. So, for the mering topping, we are making a Swiss mering. And what that means is we are going to actually heat the mixture before we whip it. So, I have my five egg whites. I'm going to add that to my bowl. And I'm doing this in the stand mixer bowl. The bowl is heat proof, which is great. Five egg whites is a lot to whip into mering. So, I'm going to have the stand mixer do it for me. Little bit of salt to this. And I'm going to add one cup of brown sugar.
This is a brown sugar Swiss mering. And I just like the kind of slightly caramelly flavor that it brings to the mering. Mering with white sugar, it's a great tool, but it's also just incredibly sweet on its own. So, I have some water here that's just at a simmer. And I am going to put my bowl I'm going to pop my bowl into my double boiler. This is the same saucepan I use to cook my pudding. And I'm going to stir this over the heat until two things. One is the sugar is fully dissolved into the egg whites cuz egg whites are mostly water. And two, that it registers 160 on my thermometer. So, it's like fully pasteurized. And that just means that I don't have to wait for the meringue to like fully bake
through in the oven. I can really just put it in until it's set and toasted. So, this is going to take a while. It's kind of optional to like reach that 160 for Swiss mering. But, if you if like the pasteurization is important to you and you want to do that step, just know it's going to take a little while. Because my bowl is touching the water, it did not take long to get to 160. Kind of nice, actually. So, right now I'm at Where am I? 162. Okay. So, I'm going to take the bowl out. And now I'm done with my heat. So, I'm going to get rid of this. And now I'm going to grab my stand mixer and we're going to whip this into meringue. So, I have the whisk
attachment. We're going to start I'm going to save this spatula for applying the meringue and we're going to start to whip this. Smells so good. smells like so brown sugary. And when you're whipping meringue, it's nice to start out kind of slow and gradually increase the speed. And as it whips, all this air is going to get incorporated and it's going to cool off. The only additional ingredient I have is vanilla. And I'm going to add that at the end after it's already whipped. So, let's check the consistency. I can tell that it's almost done because So, let's pull it up. We want to beat this
until we get nice stiff peaks. We're about there. And I had it on high. So, let's take a look at the consistency. Maybe a little bit more whipping, but it's pretty close. So, now I'm going to add my vanilla. Maybe just beat it for another few seconds. And we're all ready to top our pie. So here we have our brown sugar Swiss mering. And the whole reason for using a Swiss mering on a meringue pie is because it's more stable. You can make meringue. It's called a French mering by just mixing sugar and egg whites and whipping it. But you'll get greater stability, which means less weeping. So if you've ever made a mering pie and had like liquid kind of seep out, that's called weeping. This is going to help
prevent that. So here you see we have this nice firm peak. We are going to top our pie. And this is the fun part. Now it's whipped up and we have a kind of like off-white cream colored meringue from the brown sugar. So I put my pie plate back on the baking sheet to make in and out of the oven a little bit easier. I'm going to uncover it. I like to just start by dolloping the meringue into the center of the pie. Because I'm going to bake this again. I want to fully cover the filling. I don't really want the filling exposed to the heat of the oven. So for this, I'm going to actually grab my offset spatula. So I'm going to take this and gently sort of spread it around. And as I spread it to the edges,
I'm going to anchor it to the edge of the crust. So get that contact between the meringue and the pastry. So fully covering the chocolate filling. And because meringue is filled with air bubbles that is basically meringue is like this airy mixture. It's like trapped air bubbles in this matrix of egg white. It is a great insulator. So it's going to insulate the pudding underneath. So the pudding itself is not going to get really hot in the oven. This is maybe half or 2/3 of the meringue. I'm going to put the rest on top. But I'm just doing this step for now. And then the rest of it can be nice and decorative and just kind of a crumb coat of sorts. We are going to
bake this again. So then the rest of the mering goes on top. Okay. Ready? All right. Last big dollop right in the center. And now this is really the fun part. It's like make nice texture and swooshes. I like seeing the vanilla beans in it. Yeah, the little specks. I do too. I like the texture because where you make little peaks, that's what's going to catch the heat and give you that color and like maybe get like a little dark, even a little burned into the oven. And we're going to bake this just until I see nice color on the peaks of the mering.
Oops. Sorry. Child safety, child guard. Okay. So, I'm going to keep an eye on this. This is maybe going to take 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 to 10. So, at 4:25, it has been like 12 minutes. It's looking great. It's puffed a little bit, which is a great sign. It's taken on some color. I am going to blast it under the broiler, but like be so careful and monitor it just to get a little bit more color on there, but I'm I'm not going to walk away. I'm just going to I'm going to keep such a close eye just because I want that look of like a little bit more a little bit just darker spots. Ooh, it looks so good. Because there's sugar in it, it's going to take on color so fast and a lot of sugar. It's almost there even.
Oh, yeah. I think like 10 more seconds. Okay, I'm going to pull it. Oh, it looks so good. Okay, this looks so beautiful. There was like tiny wisps of smoke coming out of the oven, which is kind of the level of toasting that I want on the meringue. Gives you that like toasted marshmallow flavor. This looks great. The pie is done. It just needs to cool. So, the pudding is not going to set until it's like fully chilled. Again, we have the butter in there, the chocolate, like all of that needs to rest and cool down and firm up. And the meringue is cooked. So, it's like we're not going to get any weeping hopefully because we dissolved all the sugar. This is going to go into the fridge. So, I'm actually going to
let it cool off and release any steam like out before I put it in the fridge cuz I don't want to have condensation. And then once it's cooled down, I'm going to pop it in the fridge, and then we're going to cut into it once it's cold. So, this is actually kind of a nice make ahead dessert if you're like entertaining, make it in like the early afternoon, and it can just hang out in the fridge. So, I'm going to set it here to cool, and then once it goes into the fridge and it's set, we'll cut into it. I think that the pie has been chilling for maybe like 4 hours. Do we think three and a half? Should probably go longer. So, here's the pie.
It feels cold on the bottom, so that's a good sign. We're going to cut into it. I can hear the knife like cutting through the little air pockets in the meringue. Oh, it seems a little seems a little loose. Let's see. This is definitely like a clean the knife with every cut kind of thing. I can also tell from the way the knife is going through the crust that it's nice and flaky. Is that pudding a little looser than it would be if it had more time? Yes. But does it look really good? Also, yes. I'm going to maybe just clean up that edge a little. The pudding is cool. Not cold. It should be cold. Leave it. give it more time than I did, but I'm gonna give it a taste.
The meringue, it's so well balanced, which is a hard thing to achieve with mering desserts cuz they're so sweet, but the brown sugar really gives it another dimension. It plays so well with the chocolate and the meringue, it's like set all the way through. I love the toasted flavor on the outside. What a delicious pie. Feel like people don't think about chocolate and pie together, but this is a really good one. This dessert really does show off the power of eggs. It's like we have the yolks in the pudding, so it's like rich and smooth and silky and luscious and thick. And then you have the whites in the meringue, which is like light and airy and kind of dissolve. So, you get this
really cool textural contrast in the dessert. So, kind of a winner. It looks old-fashioned, but I actually think it is like more sophisticated than it looks. So, I want to thank our friends at Vital Farms for sponsoring the episode. If you go to the link in the description below, you can go to their blog and get more recipe inspiration with their eggs and butter. And I want to say thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe.
