Black Bottom Chocolate and Nutella pie, with sweet cherries

 

It is Pie Day at the office, and Jocelyn, the pie winner, last week requested 'something with nutella and cherries.'  I combined a few recipes and eliminated and added a bunch of ingredients, and came up with my own creation:  a Black Bottom Chocolate and Nutella pie, with sweet cherries.  Speaking with absolutely no bias, it is awesome.

Crust
16 Oreo Cookies
2 ounces of butter
Pinch of Cinnamon
2 tbs of milk

Crumb cookies in food processor on pulse
Add cinnamon and pulse
Add melted butter and pulse
Add milk and pulse

Place into greased and floured 9” pie dish and press gently with your fingers until the crumb crust covers the pie dish completely.  Bake in preheated oven at 325 for 6 minutes.

Filling
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened Hershey Cocoa powder
2 tbs cornstarch
1 ½ cups whole milk
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
2 tbs Nutella spread
2 tbs unsalted butter
½ tsp vanilla extract
30 bing cherries

Combine sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch and salt into a medium saucepan.  Whisk in milk.  Cook over medium high heat until almost boiling.  Reduce heat to medium.  Add chocolate and nutella.  Cook, stirring constantly, until chocolate has melted and mixture is thick, about 5 minutes.  Do not boil.  Remove from heat; whisk in butter and vanilla until smooth.  Set aside for 15 minutes to cool.  Wash cherries and remove stems and pits.  By now, filling should be nearing room temperature.  Pour filling into pie crust.  Let it set.  Place pitted cherries on top of filling and distribute them evenly; press down into filling.

Top
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbs nutella
1 tbs frangelico
1 tbs powdered sugar
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped

Set bowl and beater blades in freezer on ice to chill for ten minutes.  Remove and pour heavy cream into bowl and beat on high until stiff peaks form.  Add nutella, frangelico and powdered sugar while beating on low.  Spread gently on top of filling until cherries can no longer be seen.  Drizzle chopped chocolate on top of whipped topping to garnish.

How it all started

I run a small entertainment agency with a handful of agents in my office. Years ago, I wanted to devise an incentive program for them, but not a lot of money flows through the office, so it couldn’t involve a lot of cash. I settled on pie. I told the agents that whoever booked the most events over a two week period earned their choice of a homemade pie, which I would bake for them. I did not really think it would have much effect on their behavior, but I was amazed at the power of pie. Starting with the first period’s competition, agents were making every possible effort to win the pie race. They would email each other to check on their pie rankings, and work that much harder to book each event that came in. And the winner always shares the pie with everyone else in the office – there’s enough of us that this results in a slice or two per employee. So it’s really just bragging rights that they earn. Still, everyone wants to be the pie champion, each period. I started this program in August of 2007, and it’s still going strong. I rarely repeat a pie, and I’ve made well over a hundred pies since the program began. I’ve become a decent baker, and, very slowly, I've begun to experiment a little and to deviate from the recipes I work from. At this point, the pies are less of a motivational tactic and more of a tradition, and I enjoy the baking, and, even more so, the eating.  The pie above was an amaretto chocolate fudge pie with an amaretti crust - one of my favorites from last year.  It wasn't pretty, but man, it was good.

Initial post

Just trying to figure this out, but once I do, I'll post once every two weeks, with a new pie