Over the holidays, Older Daughter had a hankering for French silk pie. This differs from chocolate cream pie in that it's less chocolatey (none of us are overly fond of chocolate) and more creamy. Since the local grocery stores were out of this treat, she decided to make it herself, and I photographed the process. (Here's the recipe she used.)
She did ask me to make the pie shells, since I'm better at them.
These I baked and then let cool.
Older Daughter started by breaking up some unsweetened baking chocolate.
She melted it in an improvised double-boiler (metal bowl nested over a pot of boiling water). She also added the vanilla to the melted chocolate.
While the chocolate was melting, she blended sugar with the beaten eggs. Can you see the thermometer in the background? She made sure to bring the egg mixture to 160F so there were no raw eggs in the filling.
After this, she combined the chocolate and the eggs...
...and stirred everything together. Then she let this mixture cool a bit, to about 90F.
While it was cooling, she creamed the butter.
Then she blended everything together.
After that, it was time to whip the cream.
Then it was a simple matter to fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. This is the "silk" in silk pie.
Ta da! A beautiful light chocolate filling, which she poured into the pie crusts.
We set these in our "outdoor refrigerator" (the top of the chest freezer on the porch) to cool.
Later, when the pies were cool, she whipped some more cream for a topping.
The result was certainly every bit as tasty as what you can find commercially. A nice holiday treat!
