Last Minute Grasshopper Pie

Have you ever found out you were about to have a bunch of people over, right before they came?  Happens to me all the time.  I made dinner for six, in addition to the four in my family, and had the brilliant idea to make a grasshopper pie to go with it.  I have made grasshopper pie before, and it is a big hit with my family, so it seemed like an easy solution.  You know what happens when you assume, right?

Right off the bat I had some problems.  The recipe I was using called for a 9 inch tart pan.  I don't own a tart pan.  My glass pie plates were in use, so I decided to get out an 8" disposable pie tin.  I figured I would just have a little leftover crust and filling.  Things went downhill from there.

I usually post the crust and filling separately, but, as far as I know, and please tell me if you have heard otherwise, there is no such thing as a grasshopper pie without an oreo cookie crust.

Oreos are one of the few things I always buy name brand.  Hydrox sounds like something with tentacles - not good in a cookie. 

I picked this recipe because the crust called for bittersweet chocolate to be mixed with the cookie crumbs.  I have never made an oreo crust that way before, and this is the place to try out new things...

I chopped the chocolate into small pieces and used my food processor to blend them together.  The recipe needed 28 cookies, so I had to divide the cookies and chocolate into two batches to get it all to fit in my tiny appliance.

I cut the butter into small cubes and added to the crumb mixture.  This isn't a baked crust, but the butter helps the crumbs stick together.  Later, when the pie is chilled in the refrigerator, the butter will firm up and give the crust stiffness.

Crumb crust just has to be pressed into shape in the pie plate with your fingers.  I had a lot more crust than I needed, so it was easy to fill in any cracks or gaps as I worked.

 The crust should be chilled while you make the filling.  But, it's me, so....into the freezer it goes!

Yeah, I know there are two crusts here.  I had A LOT more crumbs than I thought I would.  How deep is a 9 inch tart pan anyway?

While the crust was chilling, I got everything ready for the grasshopper part.  The filling is comprised of melted marshmallows, milk, whipped cream, creme de menthe, and creme de cocoa.  Hmmm.  I had a problem.  No whipped cream.

The recipe didn't actually called for whipped cream, it called for heavy cream.  For those of you who may have missed my cream dissertation, it turns out there are a lot of different kinds of cream.  And yes, it makes a difference.  Table cream, which is what I had here, has a lot less butterfat (the stuff that makes cream delicious and also whipp-able) than heavy cream.  My container didn't say exactly how much butterfat was in it, so I thought - "I'll just whip it longer, that should do it."

I turned my mixer with the whip attachment to medium high and left it to do its thing while I melted the marshmallows.

The marshmallows and whole milk needed to be melted on the stove.  I was supposed to use mini-marshmallows.  I only had large.  Whole milk? Nah, I went with a dash of table cream into skim milk.

Mini marshmallows would have been nice because they would melt faster than the large kind.  It turns out that might not have been helpful to me, as I lost track of what I was cooking.

That is marshmallow that bubbled over and burned onto my stove top.  With some more attentive stirring and some cussing, the marshmallows were melted into the milk mixture into a nice smooth substance.  I poured it into a bowl to allow it to cool as instructed in the recipe.  That might have been the only thing the recipe said that I actually did.

I needed to check on the cream again.

I'm sure you are all surprised to see that it hadn't whipped.  Not at all.  But wait! I have the  interwebs!

I learned that some avant guarde cooks out there add butter to milk or cream to increase the butterfat content.  That sounded completely plausible.  My husband raised his eyebrows when I added butter to my mixer, but (wisely) said nothing.  I worried that the resulting whipped cream might taste too buttery, so I added two tablespoons of sugar as well.

There may have been significantly more cursing at this point.

Still not whipped.  This was swiftly becoming some sort of unspeakable chemistry experiment during which, should pie actually be produced, I might die of shock.   It needed to be thicker, or the filling would remain soup no matter how long it chilled.  What the hell.  I added cream cheese and moved on to the liquor.

There are two kinds of liquor in grasshopper pie.  Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cocoa. The Cocoa comes in clear or brown.  I'm not sure why anyone buys the brown, chocolate desserts, maybe?  The Menthe comes in clear and green.  They both taste the same, but I always buy the green.  Why wouldn't you want something mint flavored to be green?

The recipe called for clear Creme de Menthe and green food coloring, but that just seemed silly.  And my other alterations to the instructions were going SOOO well.

I whisked the marshmallow mixture together with the liquors and then it was ready to be added to the cream.  Which, unfortunately, still wasn't whipped.  Too damn bad for it.  This pie was getting finished whether it wanted to or not.

I whisked.  I mixed.  I whipped.  Nothing was making this pie look anything like a pie.  Then I gave in and got out the Clear Gel.  My husband actually spoke up at this point, although I'm sure he wished he hadn't.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" he said.

"It'll be fine.  It's unflavored thickener," I said.

"But won't it-" he started."Just take the damn picture."

Yeah.  I may have been a bit unreasonable.  The Clear Gel helped, marginally.  I poured the filling into the oreo crust.  It was almost sad to take a pretty good looking crust and put  Dr. Moreau's Grasshopper Pie into it.

*by awful, I mean I didn't have to spit it out.

I almost threw it away.  I almost didn't let it chill.  It was like watching a train wreck.  I could see what was coming, but I couldn't stop myself.

This was the first pie in the Pie Challenge that I tasted before the experts had a chance.   I couldn't do that to my reviewers, I was that worried about it.

It wasn't awful*.  But it wasn't pie either.

This pie will not have a review by experts. Better luck next week.