The Pnictogen Wing

I've never tried to make a "French silk" chocolate pie before, so I thought I'd whip one up for pi day, using a recipe that turned out to be rather complicated. We had some leftover Nilla Wafers (stale but not expired) that I used to make a crumb crust. It's not the prettiest pie we've ever made and I sure hope it sets up correctly in the fridge.

There's got to be some easier way to make a chocolate mousse-ish filling for a pie, even if it's just "mix this powder in milk and whip air into it"

I’ve made a lot of pies in my years on Earth, especially in the last several years, but neither cinnamon nor butterscotch is a flavor that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to bake into a pie.

“pie”, to me, usually means apple or pumpkin; I’ve baked those two sorts of pie way more than any other. I’ve baked pecan a few times but don’t care for the usual recipes, quite—too gluey with sugar for my taste. I’ve baked some other sorts of fruit pie, and a few sorts of custard pie. I’ve even made a “shoo-fly” pie, which is made from molasses and really tasty—if you like molasses.

and I have made “cinnamon-butterscotch” pie, from online recipes, but only once did I get results I really liked. so I’ve thought...how would I make cinnamon and/or butterscotch pies from scratch?

cinnamon’s flavor and smell is due chiefly to a volatile lipid, an aldehyde called cinnamaldehyde. the best carrier for cinnamon flavor, therefore, is likely to be a fatty, emulsified sort of filling. that suggests a custard pie—maybe even a cream-cheese recipe—as a carrier for the cinnamon.

butterscotch is similar to caramel; it’s obtained from cooking brown sugar with butter and other ingredients. because caramel consists at least partly of oligosaccharides and their dehydration products, it makes sense to me that a starchy filling might be good at dispersing such a flavor.

I would prefer a “chiffon” style filling for both, I think, i.e. one lightened into a froth with beaten egg whites, whipping cream, or whipped gelatine.

things to think about. I’d like to get into designing recipes rather than just getting them from books and web pages.

~Chara

I have baked a LOT of pies. I have probably put more effort into mastering pies than anything else. I was trying to list all the pies I have made or tried to make:

• apple. usually I don't bother with peeling the apples, but this time I did. cooking the filling ahead of time is definitely more reliable than using uncooked apples mixed with flour or cornstarch—gotten a lot of soupy pies with such methods.
• pear, once, using them like they were apples. insipid results.
• pumpkin. definitely better to bake the crust first with those.
• pecan, a few times. it's rather too heavy and sugary for my liking.
• walnut, done once as a sort of ersatz pecan pie. cheaper, too.
• blackberry, once.
• cherry, once using fresh cherries, and I hated the result.
• lemon meringue, a couple times, both failed—it never set properly
• "shoo-fly", a dark strong-tasting molasses filling. I made one once and ended up being the only one who would eat any, and even then I would only eat thin wedges.
• cinnamon-butterscotch, using the Fannie Farmer recipe for a butterscotch chiffon pie as a basis. the first time (baked, like, a day after we finished "Undertale" the first time) it came out great; every other attempt has been disappointing.
• chicken pie. I have had rather variable results with that.

I always make crusts from scratch, usually from butter, though I have used shortening and lard—or homemade cracker crusts.

~Chara of Pnictogen