Current mood:	giddy
Entry tags:	cooking, recipes

Bakin', bakin'... Choccy-strawberry pie
So. I just made a chocolate-strawberry pie. It is based on the pie recipe I whipped together for the Iron Chef challenge (yes, I'll try to post the recipes and pics really soon, honest...)

But here's what I did:

Crust:
160 grams of almond flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
ground nutmeg
2 eggs
50 grams of melted butter
1 teaspoon of baking powder
a dab of flour for both dough and pressing the dough into the mould.

Mix together, press into a ring mould (with removable ring, of course); use a baking sheet underneath (cut to shape). Heat oven to 200 C, put the pie crust into the oven and drop temperature down to 175 C. Bake for 20 minutes.

After you take the pie crust out of the oven, coat the crust with a layer of dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids; about 80 grams) mixed with some cream and sugar. Let it cool.

Filling:
1 litre of cream
1-2 packet(s) of Mascarpone
3 egg yolks
sugar
dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids minimum), about 80 grams
dark good rum (or cocoa-rum, if you're Finnish)
gelatin leaves or powder
chopped strawberries with a bit of sugar on top if they're too sour

First, whip some 4 desilitres of cream into stiff foam.

Mix in Mascarpone.

Melt chocolate in a steam bath, stir in some cream and sugar, enough to make it runny chocolate instead of stiff molten chocolate. Mix carefully with cream-Mascarpone.

Use the same steam bath (but a different bowl) to stir egg yolks, some sugar and rum together; when the mixture thickens, mix with cream-Mascarpone-choccy mix.

Use gelatin as instructed.

Pour into mould on top of crust, and let it settle before you stir in strawberries.

Let it settle. Cut to slices. (8 for really greedy pigs, 10 or 12 for more moderate fun.)

Decorate with good taste (i.e. halved strawberries, whipped cream, choccy hearts, whatever floats your boat).

If you want to make this as low carb as possible, leave sugar out of filling and use even darker chocolate -- the crust, unfortunately, needs sugar to caramelize.