Chocolate Chess Pie (ATK)

Ingredients

Pie

1 (9-inch) store-bought pie dough round

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1½ cups (10½ ounces) plus 1 teaspoon sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

4 large eggs plus 2 large yolks

¼ cup heavy cream

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Whipped cream

1 cup heavy cream, chilled

¼ cup sour cream, chilled

¼ cup packed (1¾ ounces) light brown sugar

⅛ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

TANGY WHIPPED CREAM

Be sure that the heavy cream and sour cream are cold before whipping. Using stand mixer fitted with whisk, whip all ingredients together on medium-low speed until foamy, about 1 minute. Increase speed to high and whip until soft peaks form, 1 to 3 minutes.

Pie

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll dough into 12-inch circle on lightly floured counter. Loosely roll dough around rolling pin and gently unroll it onto greased 9-inch pie plate, letting excess dough hang over edge. Ease dough into plate by gently lifting edge of dough with your hand while pressing into plate bottom with your other hand.

2. Trim overhang to ½ inch beyond lip of plate. Tuck overhang under itself; folded edge should be flush with edge of plate. Crimp dough evenly around edge of pie using your fingers. Wrap dough- lined plate loosely in plastic and freeze until dough is firm, about 15 minutes.

3. Line chilled pie shell with 2 (12- inch) squares of parchment paper, letting parchment lie over edges of dough, and fill with pie weights. Bake until lightly golden around edges, 18 to 25 minutes. Carefully remove parchment and weights, rotate crust, and continue to bake until center begins to look opaque and slightly drier, 3 to 6 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool completely. Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees.

4. Microwave butter and chocolate in bowl at 50 percent power, stirring occasionally, until melted, about 2 minutes. In separate bowl, whisk 1/ cups sugar, flour, and salt together until combined. Whisk eggs and yolks, cream, and vanilla into sugar mixture until combined. Whisk chocolate mixture into sugar-egg mixture until fully incorporated and no streaks remain.

5. Pour filling into cooled pie shell. Sprinkle top of pie with remaining 1 tea- spoon sugar. Bake until center of pie is just set and registers 180 degrees, 35 to 40 minutes. (Slight crust will form on top.) Transfer to wire rack and let cool completely, about 4 hours. Serve. (Pie can be refrigerated for up to 4 days. Bring to room temperature before serving.)

Notes

Our preferred unsweetened chocolate is Hershey's Unsweetened Baking Bar. Take care when melting the chocolate in the microwave, using only 50 percent power and stopping to stir every 30 seconds or so. This pie needs to sit for 4 hours after baking to set up. Serve with our Tangy Whipped Cream, if desired.

WHAT CAN GO WRONG

Common Pitfalls for Custard Pies

SLUMPED CRUST

Our method calls for filling a chilled pie shell filled with pie weights (set on parchment paper in the shell) before prebaking. If you don't use pie weights when prebaking, your crust may shrink and pull away from the edges of the pie plate, and its compromised structure may leave your pie with a soggy bottom.

RUNNY SLICES

It's not easy to wait for dessert, but it's important to allow custard pies to cool and set up for at least 4 hours for clean, even slices. Slicing and serving the pie before it's completely cooled and set will result in pudding on a plate. Still delicious, but not exactly the look you want.

SHOPPING The Upper Crust We prefer homemade pie dough to store-bought (visit CooksCountry.com/singlepiecrust for our version), but sometimes you need the convenience of premade. In a recent taste test of store-bought pie dough, one brand, Wholly Wholesome, came out on top: Its frozen product, the 9" Certified Organic Traditional Bake at Home Rolled Pie Dough, was our winner, and its refrigerated product, the Organic Traditional 9" Pie Shell (which is sold already in a dispos- able pie plate), was the runner-up.

OUR FAVORITE STORE -BOUGHT CRUST Wholly Wholesome Organic Rolled Dough

The American Table What's in a Name? Or the Case of the Missing "E"

Chess pie is really a catchall term for a whole category of one-crust custard pies, from lemon to chocolate. Though now best known as a Southern dessert, chess pies were common fare across North America at least as far back as the early 19th century, and likely even before that-some culinary historians believe that English settlers brought the pie over to the New World as early as the 17th century. But where did its curious name come from? While Mary Randolph's 1825 cookbook The Virginia House-wife contained a recipe for "Transparent Pudding," which is essentially a chess pie with a different name, the earliest published recipe we could find for a pie called "chess" was in the October 1866 edition of American Agriculturalist. A reader named Mrs. Samuel P. May, from Grimes County, Texas, submitted the recipe for the simple custard pie, which she called "the best pie we ever ate," to the periodical; editors loved and printed the recipe. One derivation theory suggests that "chess" pie is a merely a clipped version of "chest" pie, meaning it could be stored in a nonrefrigerated pie chest. Another theory points to a colloquialism along the lines of, "it's no big deal, it's jes' (chess) pie." But the most likely etymology ties chess pie to an archaic English spelling of "cheese," which was often spelled with just one "e" in the middle: chese. According to culinary historian and Southern food expert Damon Lee Fowler, the word "cheese," or "chese," was often used to signify the types of curds and custards commonly used in single-crust pies. Linguistic license, which early Americans were fond of exercising, allowed cheese pie, or chese pie, to become chess pie.