I'm going to H-E-double-hockey-sticks for this one, but — I made a crust pie. It's
pastry crust on the bottom with graham cracker crust on top and Oreo crumb crust in the middle.
It's three pie crusts stacked on top of each other with a sweet binder between them. I
will surrender myself to the authorities, but first here's the recipe.
Standard shortcrust pastry. A stick of cold butter, 113g — that's one part, by weight.
Now two parts dry ingredients by weight, almost entirely flour. Normal all-purpose flour,
and then like a spoonful or two of sugar. We have plenty more sweetness coming.
A pinch or two of salt if you're using unsalted butter, and then I'll just hack at it. You
can do this with a food processor, you can do it with a pastry cutter, but you can also
just smack it around with a knife — keep cutting the butter until it almost disappears
in there.
I'll make a little well and then start working in just enough cold water to bring this together
into a shaggy dough. The reasons everything needs to be cold is you don't want to melt
the butter. If the butter melts, you get a totally homogenous texture that isn't crumbly
or flaky or anything like that.
It should look like you didn't use quite enough water. Throw that in the fridge for a half
hour, let all the particles hydrate and we should be perfect. Meanwhile, my binder that'll
go between the crusts. Dark corn syrup — you could use golden syrup or honey. The dark
syrup has a nice caramel flavor. Half a cup, 150g or so.
And then another half a cup of plain granulated sugar, 100g. The mixture of crystalized sucrose
with other syrups gets you a thick yet soft texture, at least when baked with eggs — two
eggs. A good splash of vanilla, stir smooth.
This is basically pecan pie filling. It's missing butter, but we're gonna have plenty
of butter elsewhere. Speaking of which, half a stick, like 60g of butter melted. We'll
need that to bind our crumb crusts, starting with Oreos. One of these big sleeves, which
is 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 16 Oreos, or thereabouts. Maybe 200g, max, in a bag and then hulk smash.
You can do this in a food processor but, hulk smash. That's just my rolling pin, by the
way — a blunt instrument for an imprecise job. When I need a precision instrument, I
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Anyway, I'll put maybe a third of this butter in with the cookie crumbs and then toss. Like
you'd do for any crumb crust, you want just enough butter so that it doesn't immediately
crumble when you clench it, like that. That's good enough — done.
A little flour on the counter and we can roll out our chilled, rested pastry dough. It's
always hardest at the beginning — just give it a few rolls, turn and repeat. Turning helps
you roll more evenly and it keeps the bottom of the pastry from sticking to the counter.
Very gradually it'll start to flatten out without cracking, but if it cracks a little,
that's fine. The harder a shortcrust pastry is to work, the better it's gonna taste. The
heterogeneous distribution of butter creates fault lines that'll crumble in your mouth.
Doesn't have to be super thin — what is that, like, half a centimeter? Wide enough
to cover my pie pan, which I'll grease up with my butter over here. That'll make the
pie really easy to get out later.
Lay the pastry in, then go around the edge breaking off any excess and being sure to
patch any holes. Holes would let that corn syrup mixture seep though to the pan surface
where it would burn or stick. Pour in a thin layer said mixture. It just tastes great and
it binds all the layers together. Oreo crumb layer in, and then I'll compress it a little,
like I would any crumb crust. Just doesn't smoosh the pastry underneath.
Now, to minimize both color solution and waste, I'll turn this bag inside out and throw in
two of these packages of graham crackers, about 250g. Smashy smash. That chocolate is
on the outside of the bag, so my colors are staying separate.
The rest of my melted butter goes in, with a pinch of salt if it's unsalted butter. And
you could throw in some cinnamon if you want. It's actually good if it seems like you don't
have quite enough butter to bind this into a crust. Too much butter and it'll be too
solid once baked.
Give that syrup and egg mixture another stir — it separates as it sits — then pour
in another layer on top of the chocolate, followed by all the graham cracker crumbs.
Again I'll pat it out flat and then pour over my remaining syrup. This will make the top
all shiny.
Cover in aluminum foil — that'll trap heat and get you even cooking across all those
layers — and bake at 350ºF/180ºC. We'll check back on it in 45 minutes, which is now.
Time to remove the foil and bake it again. How long depends on your oven and the dimensions
of the pan. This is a narrow, deep pan which means it's gonna take a little bit of extra
time. See how the center jiggles in there?
Bake this until everything is brown and that jiggling pretty much stops, which was another
45 minutes for me. If you want a gooey texture, bake it a little less. I like it super chewy.
Let it cool for a bit and then it's solid enough that you can just turn it out, like
that.
Slice carefully because that pastry is super crumbly, as it should be. And there you go,
there's your slice. If you're less of a crust person than I am, you can moisten things up
with some whipped cream on top. Super chewy, not that easy to cut through with a fork.
Oh yeah, H-E-double-hockey-sticks. It's like a giant chewy, chocolatey Golden Graham. You
know, it's solid enough that you can just pick up the piece, and that's the way to do
it. Do it in moderation.