Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Crack Pie - thank you Christina Tosi

As I was poring over an old issue of Bon Appetit (I end up keeping each issue for months and then sporadically looking through them until finally I have had them around for almost a year and I do a final read-through and pull out anything that looks interesting) I found an article on the desserts of Christina Tosi - the pastry chef at Momofuku Milk Bar in NYC. I immediately wanted to make one of the recipes but after looking at both the steps involved and the amounts of butter and cream, I knew I had to wait until I was assured that other people would help me eat it. When we made a date to have our friends over I immediately saw my opportunity and dove in to making my very first crack pie.

For great crack pie commentary click here.
The crust was a multi-step process - I won't go into the details because you can find them here, but I will say that you basically have to make a buttery oat cookie to begin. Once you have baked the cookie, you let it cool a bit then you crumble it up, add another round of butter and sugar to re-bind it together, and shmush that into a pie tin so that it resembles a crust.

Once it is formed into a crust, set aside. Next you make the filling which consists of more buttery, sugary, creamy goodness. Pour that into the crust and pop in the oven until it browns. To finish off the pie Tosi lets it cool and then refrigerates it overnight (I gave it 6 hours and it was fine). The pie was described in the article as "rich, salty-sweet" but in the comments online I found people saying that they found it too sweet so I added a little extra salt which was definitely a good call for me.

I liked the pie but I can eat about two bites of it before feeling like I need to go into hibernation, in a good way. It was kind of like a pecan pie without the pecans. Next - Tosi's blueberries and cream cookies.

3 comments:

  1. Another great post. Ali Roman works for Christina at Milk Bar and sent me some crack pie once. It is insanely delicious! BTW Ali just started her own preserve company with a friend, thought you might like to check it out: http://www.maidenbk.com/.

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  2. Thank you! Ali's site and business looks amazing! Do they ship? :)

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  3. Zoe... yum! And more gorgeous picuters as well. I see spring has sprung.... the trees! We have a couple of those going here too.. they look beautiful but at the same time sorta scary (because they look like allergies, ha ha). You have such nice light in your kitchen... ahhhh... and it's nice to see the Quaker Oats, even out of focus, and without the ol' Quaker who sorta looks like Barbara Bush. xxx j

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