Chocolate cream pie

Every Thanksgiving, I think I'm going to make my brother pumpkin pie. Not fake British pumpkin pie, butternut squash or sweet potatoes masquerading as their tastier relative, but proper childhood pumpkin pie, made with canned pumpkins and enough sugar to make your teeth fall out. Every year, though, I end up reaching for the sweet potatoes.

This year, though, I let the internet come to my rescue. Amazon sold three cans of pumpkin for £9, delivery by the 24th. Cutting it a little fine, but too good an offer to turn down. I ordered, and promptly proceeded to tell everyone that we were going to have the Best Thanksgiving Ever.

Thursday morning came, no delivery. We had to leave by 11 to get to my folks on time, so I checked my account, figuring that by refreshing a page I could make the box come faster. Amazon solemnly informed me that I had placed no such order. The Girlfriend's account said the same thing. The pumpkin was out of stock, and had been moved to my saved items.

The next hour was spent becoming a member of pretty much every supermarket in the UK, only to learn that they too were out of stock. Occado had organic pumpkin, but wouldn't deliver until December. The UK was facing a pumpkin famine.

Lesson learned for next year, then. But for now, we were dessert-less. A terrible prospect, close to a death sentence in my household. Hence, chocolate cream pie.

The first recipe I found was this one from Betty Crocker, which involves meting chocolate with half a bag of marshmallows. It was delicious, but unfortunately not great for my veggy step-father. So I improvised:

Ingredients:
Half a packet of digestives.
Half a block of butter.
2 1/2 bars of dark chocolate
1/4 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1 cup double cream
Extra cream for the topping.

To make the cheesecake base, bash the digestives until they're in crumbs. A blender is probably very useful at this point, but if, like me, you have to do the washing up, you might prefer the method of putting the biscuits in a bag and bashing them with a rolling pin. It's also great for pent-up rage.

Melt the butter in the microwave, and add it slowly to the digestives, stirring, until the mixture can be molded into a ball without crumbling. You may need more or less butter depending on your cholesterol levels and the phases of the moon.

Line a pie dish. I lined a metal dish with cling film and it worked fantastically, but when I tried the same trick with a ceramic dish the cling film stuck. Parchment paper might work better. Or you could just use little ramekins for individual pies.

Fill the dish with the biscuit mixture, going up to the top of the pie dish. Try to keep this as thin as possible, or else people will just eat the filling, which is always a bit of a low blow.

Put the pie dish in the fridge to cool.

Heat the milk and chocolate in a saucepan, stirring constantly, until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is all smooth and lovely. Let this cool (I put it in the fridge for 5 minutes) and then stir in the egg yolks. Trying to stop the eggs scrambling is one of those skills that everyone seems to have a knack for- personally I try to make sure that the chocolate is warm rather than hot and stir quickly.

Once the eggs are stirred in, return the pan to the fridge to cool for about 20 minutes.

Whisk up the cream so that it's stiff, and then fold in the chocolate mixture until it's all blended in and there's no marbling, then pour the whole thing into the pie base. Return the pie dish to the fridge until it's set (this took about 2 hours for me).

When the pie is set, you can top it with more whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

Serve 4 over 2 nights, or one girlfriend over the course of an afternoon.