Arkansas · Dessert
Arkansas Possum Pie
- Intermediate
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- For the crust: 150g flour, 115g butter, 75g chopped pecans
- For the cream layer: 200g cream cheese, 100g icing sugar, 250ml whipped cream
- For the chocolate layer: 500ml milk, 4 yolks, 100g sugar, 40g cornstarch, 100g dark chocolate
- Whipped cream and pecans to finish
The skills inside
Folding: keeping the air inRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the flour, butter, and pecans together, press into a pie plate, and bake at 175C for 20 min. Cool. 20 min
- Beat the cream cheese and icing sugar smooth, fold in the whipped cream, and spread over the cooled crust.
- Make a chocolate pudding: heat the milk, whisk yolks with sugar and cornstarch, temper, return, add the chocolate, and cook to a thick boil. Cool slightly.
- Spread the chocolate pudding over the cream cheese layer.
- Chill 3 hours, then top with whipped cream and pecans. 180 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes
- The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
- The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
- Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
- Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
- Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Banyuls or Ruby Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry
- From the Taps
- Imperial stout
- Zero-Proof
- Espresso
Chocolate wants fortified sweetness or roast-bitter contrast: the wine must out-sweet the plate, or oppose it entirely.
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