I don’t have that many recipe books that I use regularly, but the ones that I do I use ALL THE TIME. They are the equivalent of tried ‘n’ true sewing patterns. One of them is this big book of really classic but very delicious recipes by Anna Olson. The second is Tessa Huff’s Layered cake book which has loads of amazing flavour combinations (I’m really excited for her general desserts book that’s coming out in March!). And the third book is the Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, which is a cookbook full of pie recipes taken from the pie shop of the same name. I’ve made quite a few of the recipes from the book, and pretty much all of them have been delicious. I’ve been gradually getting better at making my own crust, simply because I’ve been doing it every time and this makes me suck less.
Yesterday I mixed up the time of a private lesson and they were very nice about it, but I wanted to make a little treat to bring with me to the rescheduled lesson (today). I had all the ingredients for this piece except for the chocolate, so I grabbed that from the grocery store while the dough for the crust was chilling and got to work.
The first thing you do is toast your oats in the oven for 10ish minutes. I was so surprised by how good it smelled after only a few minutes. I always forget how much roasting/toasting things can bring out the flavours. I also rolled out the crust and had it chilling in the dish in the freezer while the oats were toasting. After that, I partially pre-baked it and set it aside to cool. I’ve had to partially pre-bake a bunch of crusts I’ve made lately, and this is definitely one of my most successful. I don’t know why it’s so much weirder for me to bake it ahead of time, but I’ve been struggling and I’m glad this one came out well!
“Black bottom” refers to a layer of dark chocolate ganache along the bottom of the crust. I’ve had weird luck with ganache the past few times I made it, but this recipe was spot on and the ratio of cream to chocolate was perfect. You basically chop up the chocolate, heat some cream, let the chocolate sit in it for a few minutes and then whisk it all together. You then spoon it into the bottom of the crust evenly and put it all in the freezer to chill while you make the rest of the filling. When I look at the photos of this pie on the Four & Twenty Blackbirds website, in retrospect they have a much thinner layer of ganache but I was like USE IT ALL and I have no regrets.
The oat filling is a brown sugar custard and was really easy to make. No stove-top heating (aka trying not to make scrambled eggs). It involved just mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl, including the oats I toasted, and then pouring it into the crust on top of the ganache. After looking at the photos where the chocolate is much thinner, it now makes sense why I had a bunch of the oat filling left over! Ooooops. I wanted to try to find something to do with it but I had no leftover dough and it seemed like it was just going to be so much extra work to try to use it up. If I’d had a premade tart shell or two lying around I definitely would’ve cooked up some bonus tarts, because the filling was very delicious even on its own, but ALAS. Next time I’ll know to either scale down the chocolate and just eat the extra or to hold back a bit extra dough. The below photo is what it looks like with the filling in the shell before it was baked (just so you can see how high I filled it – I always doubt myself at this part and worry about it overflowing when it bakes).
And ta da! It turned out exactly like the photos, which I was really happy about! I recently made the grapefruit custard pie from this same book and i think I screwed up something about the custard when I was making it because the texture was really weird and gross and I ended up getting rid of the pie because I disliked it so much. I’m not giving up on that one, but it’ll probably be a while before I return to give it another go. This one, on the other hand. IT’S SO DELICIOUS. I wanted to eat the whole pie in one go. It smells so good right out of the oven that I only let it partially cool before grabbing a slice to try. I’m interested to try it today after it’s been in the fridge overnight, because the chocolate was melty and gooey when I had my first slice.
If you’re feeling dubious about making an oatmeal pie, of all things, cast aside your doubts! Make this pie. It’s so cozy and comforting and honestly pretty quick to make in terms of actual time spent actively doing things. And you probably have most of these ingredients around your house already if you bake regularly. I’m such a pie person. I do love cakes, but if I’m going to sit down and eat a whole bunch of one thing, it’s definitely pie and not cake. I’m usually a fruit pie gal, but lately I’ve been branching out and I’m glad this particular experiment was so successful! Yummmm.
