Salted Caramel and Chocolate Pie

Sometimes, you just want to take as many creamy and delicious things as possible and combine them into something edible.  When my coworker told me about a super easy salted caramel pie that she had made, my brain was intrigued and I bought all of the ingredients for my own, ridiculous version of it.  They sat in my cupboard/fridge for a couple of months, as working at a bakeshop apparently makes one disinclined to bake for oneself.

But today, I woke up and thought, "I'm going to make that pie, goddammit."  So I did.  It took a long time, and simultaneously, I managed to do three loads of laundry and watch 12 episodes in a row of "Who the (bleep) Did I Marry," which is possibly one of the best reality shows I've seen lately.

So yes, based on the ingredients list, this SHOULD have been the easiest pie in the world.  And it was, in some ways, because it's hard to mix chocolate, caramel, and cream in such a way that it tastes terrible.  But because I started this without caffeine in my system (baking is to caffeine is as driving is to not drinking alcohol...or something like that) and I have no sense of mise en place and am terribly out of practice, this got overly complicated.

For the caramel, you will need:
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
salt (the recipe calls for fleur de sel, which would have been lovely, but I couldn't be bothered to go out and buy salt for $4 an ounce)

For the ganache:
1/2 c. heavy cream
4 oz. good, bittersweet chocolate

For the crust, you will need:
1 1/2 c. chocolate cookie crumb (I used Newman's Own Alphabet Cookies)
4 tbsp. butter
a couple tbsp. sugar (maybe 2)

For the whipped cream:
1/2 tbsp. confectioner's sugar
1/2 c. heavy cream


First, combine your crust ingredients and mash them into a 9" pie pan.  Pop in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  Remove (duh) and set aside.

Crank up the oven to 425 degrees.  Pour the 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk into a pan, and place inside another, bigger pan.  (The recipe called for a 9 x 13 pan inside a roasting pan, but I don't have a roasting pan, so I used  a smaller dish inside a 9 x 13 pan.)  Sprinkle on some salt, place foil over the little pan, and fill the bigger pan with water until it's about 1/3 way up.  Place the whole mess in the oven and leave it to bake for about 2 hours.

Every once in awhile, you want to lift the foil and give it a good stir.  Unfortunately, when I did this, I somehow got water into the pan.  Convinced that I had ruined the entire pie, there was much gnashing of teeth and crying....well, not really, but I freaked out a teensy bit and consulted Kate, the official star of this blog because she likes my cooking and provides emotional support when I do stupid things like get water in caramel.  She suggested pouring off the water, and when I did that, I discovered a  nice layer of golden brown wonderfulness underneath.  I stirred everything together, took off the foil, and let it bake for a little longer, assuming that the water molecules would evaporate.  That seemed to work.

Anyway.  When done, the caramel will be a rich color with some lumps that will straighten out as it cools.

Once things have cooled slightly, scrape everything into your crust.  Spray some plastic wrap (or Ziploc bags cut open, if you don't have plastic wrap....) with cooking spray and let it sit over the caramel.  Place in the fridge for a really long time.  4 hours minimum.



As you are nearing about the 3 hour mark of refrigeration, make your ganache.  Get your chocolate and cream all nice and gooey in a double boil on the stove, then pull out the pie and pour the ganache on.  Place it all back in the fridge.  Plastic wrap isn't really necessary, but I used a pie pan cover to keep out weird fridge flavors.



Once the ganache has cooled, whip your heavy cream into a frenzy and layer it on the pie.  Add chocolate shavings and potentially more salt.  You can re-chill it, but at this point, you probably just want to slice into the freaking thing.  Feel free to do so.

I love whipping cream by hand.  It's just so damn satisfying and beautiful.

I don't mean to brag or anything, but Kate declared this the best thing she has ever eaten.  You will probably need to eat very tiny slices, because this is RICH. 

Next time, I would make the ganache layer a little thinner, as the flavor overwhelmed the caramel a bit.  I would also mash the crumbs in the crust into a finer grain, but as I am lacking a food processor, I used the rolling pin method until I got lazy.  It might also be worth buying the $4 salt, because I couldn't taste the "salted" part of this pie so much.  Most recipes I've seen for this just call for caramel and whipped cream, but Kate hates whipped cream, and I wanted more chocolate in here.  It might be worth trying it that way, however, so the caramel can really shine.  

Enjoy!

***Later note: After discussing this recipe with my parents, my dad mentioned that when he lived in Brazil, they used to set cans of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of boiling water for 2 or 3 hours, then open them once they cooled.  I might try that next time, because dealing with 28 ounces of sticky, boiling sugar in an open pan is a MESS.