The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Mississippi · Dessert

Mississippi Mud Pie

  • Advanced
  • 2 h 30 m
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich Leads with richness that coats and comforts.

Ingredients

  • For the crust: 250g chocolate cookies crushed, 115g butter melted
  • For the fudge layer: 200g dark chocolate, 115g butter, 3 eggs, 150g sugar, 50g flour
  • For the mousse: 300g dark chocolate, 500ml cream, 2 tbsp sugar
  • Chocolate shavings to finish

Equipment

Springform

The skills inside

The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

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

  1. Mix the cookie crumbs and butter, press into a springform, and chill.
  2. Melt the chocolate and butter, whisk in the eggs, sugar, and flour, pour over the crust, and bake at 175C for 25 min until set with a slight wobble. Cool. 25 min
  3. Melt the mousse chocolate and cool slightly. Whip the cream with the sugar and fold it in.
  4. Spread the mousse thick over the cooled fudge layer.
  5. Chill 4 hours, then top with chocolate shavings and unmould. 240 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes

  • Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
  • The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
  • The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
  • The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
  • Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.

Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.

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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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Mississippi Mud Pie Search YouTube: J. Kenji López-Alt on Mississippi Mud Pie A YouTube search for J. Kenji López-Alt and this dish. No affiliation.