An easy class this week since we used the same crust and filling base for both pies. Since we didn't prep the dough for this week in the last class, we started by making the chocolate crust. It was a very tender dough, rich with butter and coloured and flavoured with cocoa powder. To firm the dough up for rolling, we spread it out on a sheet pan lined with parchment, then placed it into a
blast chiller. This is my 9th class at George Brown but the first time I'd heard of or used this appliance. It is basically a fridge that gets things cold really fast. Why have they been hiding this technological miracle from us!? All those classes where we had to wait for our baked goods to cool before we could go home!
Next, we made the filling base from sugar, corn syrup, butter and eggs. It was very sticky and messy to work with, so I tried to minimize the number of bowls we had to use. For the pecan pie, we lined the base of the pies with graham cracker crumbs and pecan halves. For the walnut-raisin, we also added some maple extract to the filling ingredients. After pouring the filling mixture over the nuts, our pies were ready to bake and we all get a half hour break.
When the pies were out of the oven and somewhat cool, we drizzled melted chocolate over the top in a lattice design. Too bad that we didn't make an actual lattice from pie dough. Predictably, the pies were quite sweet but had a decent amount of nuts in them. Chef said that chocolate crusts are difficult to bake because it's hard to gauge when they're done due to their dark colour. I found the chocolate dough to be too rich and chocolatey to pair with this sort of pie.
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