Adventures in Ratio Baking: Pie Ratio Plus Custard Ratio Equals Chocolate Pie

About a year after starting ratio baking, I’m finally at a point where I can combine ratios. Quite frankly, I was kind of counting down to this day. How amazing would it be if I could made a dessert using just ratios? Well, it finally happened. Last year, I tried the ratios for making pie dough and custard with the goal of making a chocolate custard pie.

Now, I’m not adverse to eating a whole pie, but, most of the time, I just want a slice. I’m not that much of a pie eater. At some point last year, I decided to pick up some mini cake tins, and then I kept looking at them, thinking they would be perfect to make one serving pies. Of course, at that time, I hadn’t yet tried making pie, so it would still be a few months before I got around to making mini pies.

But that day finally arrived. I’d finally cleared my kitchen of Christmas cookies and leftover candy, so it was time to dive back into ratio baking. When I’d made my first apple pie, I’d made some notes about how much the water, flour, and butter should weigh in order to get so much pie dough.

I have 3 little cake tins and had no idea what their dimensions are, so I just used the notes I had to make 15 ounces of pie dough. That had previously given me the crust and a lattice top for my apple pie. I figured I’d just make the leftover dough into cookies as Autumn Rain suggested in her comment.

Making the Pie Dough

Now you might be wondering why there’s a picture of a mixing bowl and a potato masher. Well, the day I decided to make pie, I’d also given myself a small cut on my left hand. I prefer to mix my pie dough by hand and I was short a hand, so figured the potato masher would work. It wasn’t perfect, but did give me the extra hand I needed!

Anyways, I’d always thought I would like being able to wander into the kitchen and simply decide to make something. Since butter for pie must be cold and no eggs are required, this was a perfect time to do just that. Of course, I’m a planner, so I knew what I was going to be doing, but it was freeing to not have to plan ahead and take out butter and eggs.

Into the kitchen I went and out came my scale. Measuring out the flour, butter, and water was easy. Cutting the butter into the flour was a little more difficult with one hand, so I’m glad my brain pointed me in the direction of my potato masher. Once the butter was sufficiently cut in, I added the water and mixed it to a soft, squishy dough. I wrapped it in plastic and stuck it into the fridge before going to go play with my kids for a bit.

Making the Custard Filling – Chocolate, Of Course

So, I made 3 pies, but only two of them were chocolate custard pies. The third was an apple pie for my husband. I won’t share how I made the filling here, but, if you’re interested, you can head over to read about my adventures in making apple pie.

I’ve tried making custard with sweetened condensed milk (don’t do it) and milk, so, this time, I decided to use heavy whipping cream. I didn’t want too much filling because my mini cake tins are kind of small, so I used 3 egg yolks (use only yolks for stirred custards like this one) and the heavy cream. I created a double boiler using a small pot and my mixing bowl and stirred the eggs and cream until thick, which took less than 10 minutes. Since I wanted chocolate (everything’s better with chocolate), I stirred in about a large spoonful of cocoa powder and a bit of vanilla extract and then stuck it into the fridge.

One thing I will say is to not forget the sugar! How do I know that? I forgot the sugar. I don’t know exactly how much to add, but add to taste, I suppose. Just make sure you add it because unsweetened chocolate custard is disgusting.

Baking and Assembly

My apple pie went in fully filled, but I needed to blind bake the other two since my custard filling would go in cold. I’d forgotten to get some beans, but always have plenty of rice on hand. After carefully rolling and cutting the pie dough so it would fit into my tins, I took a piece of parchment paper and placed it on top of my pie crust. Then I gently filled it up with rice. While beans are commonly used to blind bake, rice works just as well. Check out my post on making apple pie to see how I assembled my mini apple pie.

From baking pie previously, I decided to preheat my oven to 375 degrees and then slid the three pies on a cookie sheet into the middle. An hour later, I had a beautiful apple pie that could have used more apple and two nicely baked and browned pie crusts.

Now for the fun part: filling the crusts with chocolate custard!

Well, it was actually super easy. All I had to do was spoon the custard into the pie crust and spread it around. And then, of course, eat. Want to know how I knew I had forgotten to add sugar? After filling and smoothing the custard, I took a bite, and immediately realized I had forgotten the sugar. It’s not an adventure in ratio baking without some sort of mishap!

So, there you go.

Two ratios, one dessert.