Adventures In Grasshopper Cream Pie
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PI Day and St. Patrick’s Day come in quick succession, which is perhaps why I was thinking about pie. And then green pie. Which naturally led to Grasshopper Pie. Thinking about pie led to googling about pie. And I discovered that the vast majority of grasshopper pie recipes require the use of marshmallow fluff. I hate marshmallow fluff. The only recipe that did not use the devil’s fluff instead called for the use of gelatin and marshmallows, which I was also not enthusiastic about. And then I wondered if my cream pie recipe could be adapted to make Grasshopper Cream Pie.
And the answer is most deliciously…YES!
In a previous post, I have detailed the method for making cream pie so I won’t go too much into depth here. But you start by whisking your dry ingredients together in a large saucepan, then whisk in your eggs and egg yolks until the mixture is smooth. Add the milk, cream, and liqueurs and whisk again. Cook on medium heat, whisking constantly. I cannot emphasize that enough…you are making creme patissiere and it must be whisked non-stop throughout the entire cooking process. Once it starts to thicken, remove it from the heat, and whisk in cubed butter. The slightly lumpy custard will smooth out when the butter is whisked in. Pour it into a prepared chocolate crumb pie crust, cover it with plastic food wrap that is resting on the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming, and refrigerate it until it’s completely cool, which usually takes 2-3 hours.
Garnish it as you wish and serve it up. Andes mints make a lovely garnish, although I can’t find them in grocery stores these days, so I ordered some off Amazon. I will point out that this recipe calls for half a cup of liqueur. Yes, most of the alcohol will cook off, but the resulting dessert might still have trace amounts of alcohol in it. I personally would be okay serving this to anyone, but others might think twice about serving it to children or a teetotaler.
Now, as it happens, you can also make a Grasshopper Trifle with this recipe. As I’m sure you know, trifle is just cubes of some kind of cake, custard, whipped cream, and some kind of fruit all layered beautifully together in a transparent glass serving dish. If you wish to use this recipe to make a Grasshopper Trifle, then I’d suggest not adding the cream to the custard recipe. Once it’s cooked, cover it and let it cool in the fridge in a bowl. Once it’s cool, use a hand mixer (I got this cordless one for Christmas in Empire Red; love it!) to whip up a cup of whipping cream to soft peaks. Then run the hand mixer through the cooled custard, so that it’s a little smoother and easier to mix. Then add the custard to the whipped cream and fold it carefully together so that you don’t deflate the whipped cream.
Next, in your glass serving bowl, layer some cubes of dense chocolate cake (I’d recommend pound cake, as regular cake is a little soft and fragile for this dish), then a layer of your Grasshopper Cream, then a layer of a few Andes mints chopped up. Go easy on the Andes mints…you don’t want to overwhelm the dish with mint or sweetness. Repeat the cake/custard/mints layer twice more and you have a lovely Grasshopper Trifle. It’s absolutely delicious. When I was testing this out for this blog post, I didn’t have any chocolate pound cake, so instead, I cubed up a chocolate muffin into an individual serving dish, put a layer of the custard over the top, and Andes mints on top of that. Yum!
Grasshopper Cream Pie
Click here for printable PDF of recipe
INGREDIENTS
1 chocolate crumb crust
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup creme de cacao
1/4 cup creme de menthe
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
DIRECTIONS
In a medium saucepan, whisk together sugar, starch, and salt. Add the eggs and yolks, whisking until smooth and no pockets of sugar-starch remain. Add the cream, milk, creme de cacao, and creme de menthe and whisk again. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium heat, whisking the whole time. As the custard begins to bubble, it will thicken. As soon as it’s thickened uniformly, remove from heat and whisk in the butter until it is fully melted. Keep whisking until the mixture is smooth. Let cool for 5 minutes.
For an extra-silky filling, pour and press the custard through a fine-mesh sieve and into the crust. If you don’t wish to sieve it, just spoon it in. Spread the custard into an even layer, press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface, and chill until custard is cool and set, 1 to 3 hours.
Garnish as desired (I suggest Andes mints) and serve.
NOTES
This method does cook the alcoholic beverages added, so most, if not all, the alcohol will be cooked out. But there still might be minute traces of alcohol in the finished dessert.
