Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

I made a declaration, about a week ago, on Facebook, proclaiming that I would bake my way through "Our Best Bites" dessert recipes. Generally, when one makes declarations, especially on Facebook, one has to follow up with them. So, here today, I have for you a chocolate chip cookie pie, as it were.
This is really very, VERY good pie. If you don't like pie but you like chocolate chip cookies, there's a very good chance you will like this.

Here's the thing, however. I am dumb. So, so dumb. Remember how sometimes I read through a recipe too quickly and screw things up? I really REALLY need to stop doing that. This calls for 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter. I read that as 1 and 1/2 CUPS.... As I was mixing in the butter (all 3 sticks of it...) I was thinking 'wow this looks at a lot lighter, and more buttery than in the pictures on the website' and then I looked at the recipe again and did a humongous forehead slap. I panicked and then I thought 'Okay! OKAY! I'll just double everything! It'll be fine!' Except I only had one egg left. I don't know what I was thinking only having one egg left in my abode. I looked at the bowl, just full of unused ingredients, I looked at the one egg, and I said "Oh to heck with it! We're trying this anyways!" And really it worked out. Much like the pumpkin cinnamon roll cake, in which I forgot the eggs entirely..., this turned out good, and I'm really interested in making it again except this time with the right amount of ingredients :D

Also, I have a pie's worth of batter sitting in my fridge and I don't know what to do with it....

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust, homemade or store-bought.
2 large eggs
1/2 C flour
1/2 C white granulated sugar
1/2 C packed brown sugar
3/4 C real butter, softened (1 1/2 sticks)
1 C chocolate chips (semi-sweet or dark works best, you might find milk too sweet)
1 C chopped pecans (you are welcome to make it without nuts)

Vanilla ice cream, or sweetened whipped cream for serving (a must!  I prefer ice cream)

optional: chocolate sauce (honestly, doesn’t really need chocolate sauce, but it looks pretty!)

Preheat oven to 325° F.

Beat eggs in large mixer bowl on high speed until foamy. Beat in flour, granulated sugar and brown sugar. Beat in butter. Stir in morsels and nuts. Spoon into pie shell.

Bake for 55 to 60 minutes or until knife inserted halfway between edge and center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack or serve slightly warmed.  Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Please can we not even talk about the issues I had with how high up to do the crust. I had a beautiful crust in the plate, and then I put the filling in and it was a good half inch below the crust. So I hurried and just mushed it all down. (I need a smaller pie plate than this one. I love you Paula Deen, but your pie plates are more deep dish)

Obviously, I shouldn't have mushed the crust down so far, because the filling rose a little higher while baking. Basically, this pie was a disaster because of the person making it, but I would HIGHLY recommend that you make it yourself and make it better than I did. Because it's delicious. And you probably have all of the ingredients in your house right now.

See? Delicious. The chocolate chips kind of settle on the bottom for this chocolately, flaky pie dough goodness. Oh man it's good. Eat it with ice cream or whipped cream! Or both!

Recipe Source: Our Best Bites - seriously an awesome site for recipes, you'll see more desserts popping up over here, from over there!

Time for some 3.1415296!

As promised, here is the apple crumble pie!
This was not my original plan for 4th of July dessert. I was going to do a cheesecake which had fruit that made it look like an American flag. My brother is not a fan of cheesecake. My brother is not a fan of cream cheese (I don't know what's wrong with him). So I was a good sister and I changed it to apple crumble pie because I knew he liked that and I really just wanted all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth to stop.
Since I wasn't initially going to make this, I hadn't taken my usual apple crumble pie recipe with me. I had to find something new, and I'm glad I did because I found an amazing pie crust recipe! This crust is SO EASY anyone can make it without failing! I promise!!! So here you have it. The pie crust...

Butter Flaky Pie Crust
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, chilled and diced
1/4 cup very cold water

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
2. Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in plate, press dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

Easy right? I will say this. I didn't think to pull the crust out of the fridge so that I could give it time to soften a bit before rolling out, so I stuck it in the microwave on the very lowest power setting for about 15 seconds or so. You don't want the dough to get warm because then the butter pieces will start melting and it just won't bake right. Also, this is a single pie crust recipe, just double it if you need a crust to cover the filling :)

And here's the apple crumble part!

Apple Crumble Pie
Pastry for a single-crust 9-inch pie
6 cups chopped, peeled tart apples
2 TB butter, melted
2 TB sour cream
4 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
1 TB all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
TOPPING:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cold butter
(For the topping, I did brown sugar instead of regular granulated sugar, because a crumble is just not a crumble to me unless brown sugar is used in it. You could do it either way and it will be fine)

1. Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry; flute edges. In a large bowl, combine the apples, butter, sour cream, lemon juice, sugar, flour cinnamon and nutmeg. Spoon into pastry shell. For topping, combine flour and sugar in a bowl; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over filling.
2. Bake at 375 for 45-50 minutes or until the filling is bubbly and apples are tender. Cool on a wire rack.

I think I cooled mine for about an hour and it was perfect for eating by then.

Doesn't that look delicious? You could probably just replace the 1/2 tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg with a whole teaspoon of apple pie spice.

I'm going to try and explain through pictures, the easiest way I have found to get a pie crust into a pie plate (You might be thinking 'There's not any possible way that's easier than trying to pick it up with my hands and having it fall apart! Blasphemy!' But this is probably a technique you already learned from your mom. We're not reinventing the wheel here). ANYWAYS! Roll it out flat. Duh...

Put the rolling pin in in the center and pull the dough over it.

Set the pin in the middle of the plate, so that half the dough is laying in it, and roll the pin out so that the dough ends up doing this:

See? I don't know how many times 'easy as pie' was referenced to while baking this thing. Really it was a ridiculous amount.

Here it is before baking.

And AFTER! I don't know that there's much better in life than a good crumble pie...

Source: www.allrecipes.com 

Does kiwi pie make up for the lack of apple pie?

My friend Jessica over at The Avenues asked me to do a guest post for her. I was pretty excited! It's the first time someone has asked me :)

http://jandcavenues.blogspot.com/2011/07/guest-post.html

You should definitely check it out because it's not a recipe I've shared with y'all here.

Good Heavens!

For the love people, why do you let me go so long without sharing a treat with you? My apologies... I moved back to Austin and then Mike came home and things have just been a bit hectic. I'm glad to be back in Austin though and I am ESPECIALLY glad to have Mike home! Even if only for 2 weeks... But that is another story.

So I totally meant to post this like, a week ago, so that if you needed an idea for St. Patrick's Day dessert then you could use this. But then I moved back to Austin and then Mike came home and-oh wait. It's a little late, but you can definitely use it next year! I just love St. Patrick's Day. Mike and I went to a celebration in downtown Austin last night to see some dancers from the totally awesome school I dance with perform (I wasn't dancing because hello I've been gone from here for 9 months), and he was telling me how sad it must be for a Mormon's favorite holiday to be an alcohol related one. And to that I say 'Tis Blarney! You don't need the alcohol to have fun! I just love Irish things so much... I am really digressing with this post. There is really nothing Irish about this dessert, it's just really good and green. And easy.

Mint Brownie Pie

Ingredients:

6 TB butter

2 oz unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup flour

Filling:

1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp mint extract

Green food coloring

1 carton (8 oz) frozen whipped topping, thawed - I know, I know, I know, I HATE whipped topping, but when trying a new recipe that calls for it I'm hesitant to make my own. You can go ahead and make your own if you want. It would work.

1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted

Directions:

In a large saucepan, melt butter and chocolate. Stir in sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour until well blended.

Pour into a greased 9 inch springform pan. Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes (mine took about 25...) or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in extract and food coloring if desired. Fold in whipped topping. Spread evenly over brownie layer. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Remove sides of pan just before serving. Melt chocolate chips, drizzle over top. Garnish with additional whipped cream and chocolate chips if desired.

This picture is posted for no other reason than it just being chocolate.

This is the filling mixture before I added whipped cream...

...and this is it after I added it. Still green, but if you want it to be darker be sure and add more food coloring before you put in the whipped cream. As I was folding it in, I thought of that but it was too late.

Well there you go! My Irish shakers think you should definitely use this for the next Irish/mint/brownie/chocolate event in your life! It's good stuff.