Dessert First - Double Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pudding Pie

My friend Courtney sent me this recipe and thought I might like it, and I might like to bring her a piece, to quote her message. The recipe was sponsored by Chex Cereal and uses Gluten Free Chex Cereal for the crust. It was published in Everyday with Rachael Ray and can be found here.

I will go over some of the issues I had putting this one together, but first I wanted to encourage you by saying if you are a woman and or you LOVE rich chocolate then you will really enjoy the final result. I have to be honest and say that I am not a huge dessert fan, or better said, I am not a sweet dessert fan, so this was a bit over the top, but Triann and Courtney both said it was incredible... I thought they were just being kind, but some of the faces they made almost made me uncomfortable so I think they were sincere.

For those of you who don't like to follow links, here is the recipe as it was written in the magazine, immediately followed by how we think it should be done :)

Double Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pudding Pie
By: Silvana Nardone
Sponsored by Chex Cereal

Ingredients:
3 cups Chocolate Chex cereal, finely crushed
5 tablespoons butter, melted
12oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped, plus more for chocolate shavings
1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa, sifted
2 cups half and half
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg plus 2 egg yolks
6 tablespoons whipping cream, plus 1 cup whipping cream whipped
1/2 cup white vanilla baking chips
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

Directions:
1. In small bowl, stir together cereal and melted butter. Press in bottom and up side of ungreased 9 inch pie pan. Refrigerate until set, about 30 minutes. Heat oven to 350F. Bake crust 15 minutes. Sprinkle with one-third of the chopped chocolate
2. In a large heatproof bowl, mix cocoa and remaining chopped chocolate; reserve. In 1-quart heavy saucepan, heat half-and-half over medium-high heat until almost boiling. In medium heatproof bowl, beat sugar, egg and egg yolks with whisk until pale yellow. Slowly beat in half of the hot half-and-half, then pour egg mixture into saucepan. Reduce heat to medium. Heat mixture just to boiling. Cook, beating with whisk, about 1 minute or until thickened. Pour through sieve into reserved cocoa mixture; beat with whisk until smooth. Pour into crust; refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Wipe out saucepan. Add 6 tablespoons cream. Heat to boiling over medium-high heat. Place vanilla baking chips and peanut butter in medium heatproof bowl. Pour hot cream on top and let stand until chocolate is melted, about 2 minutes; beat with whisk until smooth. Spread evenly over chilled pie. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 1/2 hours.
4. To serve, top servings of pie with whipped cream and chocolate shavings


OK, so we had trouble right off the bat. We are known for our collection of small appliances and kitchen gadgets, but we could not for the life of us find our sieve. I ended up making a run to Fred Meyers (where I found a buy 2 kitchen gadgets, get one free coupon) and came home with a sieve, a fridge thermometer and a new ice cube tray, but I digress.

Step 1.
We have not unpacked all of our kitchen boxes yet so instead of using a Cuisinart on the Chex cereal, I used a Daniel...

Daniel did a great job but I would recommend the Cuisinart. The finer you can get the cereal the better the crust will be. It was fairly easy to mix the crushed cereal with the melted butter. I started by putting a bit at a time into the glass pie plate, but eventually poured it all in and pressed it from the middle of the pie plate out to and up the sides. Into the fridge it went for the 30 minute chill, and then into the oven. The recipe calls for 1/3 of the chocolate, would be easier just to say 2/3 cup. Again the Cuisinart would have been nice here but I used the food chopper instead (way too much work). I was able to sprinkle the "shaved" chocolate fairly evenly on the hot crust, and it was satisfying to watch it melt and Triann said the chocolate in the crust was awesome... A very nice touch.

Step 2.
First advice is to skip the first word "meanwhile". I tried doing step 1 and 2 at the same time, too tough to get the timing right. Finish step 1, then start 2. This step was a bit of work, but quite a bit of fun. I had never used any of these techniques before and the instructions were well written and easy to understand. The only trouble I had here was with the ingredients. Triann bought a pint of half and half, and neither of us could remember if  that was close to 2 cups, if only we had a pee-chee with its magic conversion charts.
 
I found out that a pint equals 1 3/4 cups. Or at least it does if your wife uses it for her coffee first. After you pour the filling into the crust make sure you let it sit in the fridge until it is fairly solid.

Step 3.
It seemed a bit strange to boil six tablespoons of whipping cream, but it all worked out fine. The only suggestions I have here would be to double the ingredients in this step (whipping cream, white chocolate chips, peanut butter), and make sure the filling from step 2 is set hard enough that this will not sink in like it did for us. I am assuming this would allow the white chocolate/peanut butter topping to spread itself. As you can see from our pictures below this didn't work so well for us.

Step 4.

Whip Cream. I would recommend adding 2-3 tablespoons of sugar and a touch of vanilla. We used a lemon zester to shave the chocolate, but you could use a grater or butter knife and get the same results.

So there it is. An impressive dessert when everything is said and done. Some neat techniques and a satisfying experience overall. And, as everything that you will find on this blog, Gluten Free.

Thanks again to Courtney for the recommendation.

Please let us know if you try this and your impressions, and let us know if you have a certain dish you would like us to look for. We are thinking about Muffins... hmm


Enjoy

Eric and Triann
Scrambled Eggs and Brisket

What the heck is Gluten Free?

I suppose we ought to talk a bit before we get too far. What is Gluten, why do you need to set it free, who needs to do this and what's in it for me?

Anyone who has not seen me since 2006 might not recognize me. I am almost 100 pounds lighter today than I was back than. When I run into folks I have not seen for a while they inevitably ask me how I lost all the weight. I laugh a bit and explain that I have no idea. The doctors at the time told me it was stress (I was on the road for the better part of the year traveling for work) so I bought that. In 2008 I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (info here). It is not uncommon for folks with AS to also have Crohn's disease so that was the assumption at that time. In 2009 testing showed that I did not have Crohn's, but I still had pretty extreme stomach issues. After about 8 months of trying different medications with very little results my doctor recommended that I try removing Gluten from my diet. I thought he was nuts and did nothing with his suggestion. After we moved back to Washington, we were invited to a BBQ at a good friends house. During the meal it came up that my friend was observing a Gluten Free diet, Triann remembered that my doctor had recommended that for me and after about an hour of conversation about how easy it was I agreed to try it for 6 weeks. It didn't take 6 weeks to figure out that this was an obvious piece of my puzzle, I felt better within 2 days. That happened in August of 2010, and I have been eating/cooking Gluten Free since then, and I feel amazing. I am actually enjoying food again. My current doctors do not think that there is a reason to avoid Gluten as I do not test positive for Celiac Disease (the most likely reason for a Gluten Free life), the issue is that you cannot accurately test for Celiac unless you are currently consuming Gluten and I am not willing to do that, so here I am, self diagnosed, but OK with that.

So that is how I got here, lets talk for a minute about where here is. Gluten is found in wheat, barley, rye and almost anything made from these grains. So life is now about eating things that don't contain Gluten. Obvious things to avoid would be breads, flour tortillas, crackers, pastries, deserts etc. Not so obvious things would be licorice, soy sauce, seasonings, sausage, egg noodles, etc. There are a million (this number has not been verified) websites that have been created with to assist folks with identifying Gluten Free (GF) foods, and restaurants. Google Gluten Free and see what you get.

Now back to the blog, and my intentions. What Triann and I want to do is take our love of cooking, our sense of adventure and our gift of gab, put them all together and create a blog that will record our adventures in GF cooking. For example we may have a craving for cornbread and find 20 different GF recipes... which is the best, which is the easiest, are there tricks along the way? We will try them all and report our results... we have even talked about taking some video of the process. We will just have to see where it ends up.

At the end of the day this is for us, a chance to work on something together as a couple, explore and chronicle our adventures and enjoy the feedback of our friends.

If you have a specific GF dish you are looking for, or just want to challenge us, send us a message through the comments and we will give it a shot.

Eric

p.s. I have been racking my brain to think of an appropriate tag line to sign off on each of these... if you have any good ideas please share.

A New Idea

Well, almost a year since my last post...

I started Scrambled Eggs and Brisket (emsdaddy.blogspot.com) when we found out that Triann had cancer. It was a way for me to think stuff through by writing it out. Reading back through the posts I can see a very interesting journey but it came to a stop last February. I don't know that all was better then, but apparently I didn't need to write about it anymore.

So here we are, starting 2011 and back on the blog again, why? Well, once again I will blame it on Triann. She suggested that we start writing about our adventures working through my new gluten free life. Triann and I have always enjoyed cooking and now it is even more of an adventure as we look for replacements for all the gluten filled goodies we love. So the plan is to document the recipes we try, give our honest opinion (and the opinion of the folks that taste it) and as many pictures as we can.

So stay tuned, read the posts on the site (http://emsdaddy.blogspot.com) or as notes on my facebook page. Give us feedback and send us suggestions for gluten free foods you think we should try, or something you have been looking for and we will have some fun with it.

(still thinking of the catchy tagline)

Eric