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I love slightly underdone, ultra-chocolate-y cookies and I like good pecan pie, so I was reasonably optimistic about this week's baking project, the Tuscaloosa Tollhouse Pie, from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. On the other hand, I've never really understood the point of a cookie pie. One of the great things about chocolate chip cookies is that they can be whipped up and ready to serve in under an hour. Even a giant chocolate chip skillet cookie falls into the no forethought required, fast and easy dessert category. A pie can be fast and easy, but not one using an all-butter crust that needs to be gently made, chilled, rolled, then chilled again. Could waiting at least five hours or longer for my cookie, just so it could have a butter pie shell, really be worthwhile?
Things started off well enough. I made my pie crust: the full recipe, so enough for two pies, because I figured a girl can always use a spare pie shell in the freezer.
While my pie crust chilled the first time, I cleaned the house and did whatever things, then pulled it out after the minimum time of 60 minutes. This crust was not particularly easy to work with, but I managed to produce a very rough circle and tucked it into my glass Pyrex pan. Crimping pie crusts has never been my strong suit, and my crust turned out substantially thicker along the edges than it was in the middle, but forming a pie shell isn't the sort of thing I like to fuss with overly much, so I just left it alone.
While the formed crust chilled in the freezer, I made the filling, which took about 25 minutes. I found the method for making the cookie filling fascinating - I've never made a cookie where ingredients were added in the order they are added here (whip eggs, then beat in flour+sugar, cream in butter, beat in whiskey, then fold in the mix-ins). I've also never whipped any dough/batter for the length of time this one is whipped after the flour is added. Matt and Renato mention this tollhouse pie being reminiscent of a pecan pie, but then they call for walnuts in the actual recipe. Due to their clear affection for walnuts over all other nuts, I'm completely out of walnuts, but I do have a giant bag of pecans in anticipation of someday soon remaking the praline ice cream cake from Baked Occasions. Rather than hunt down more walnuts at 9:30pm on a Saturday night, I opted to use pecans instead. I also replaced the semi-sweet chocolate chips with 70% dark chocolate chunks.
I baked my tollhouse pie for precisely the 50 minutes called for (and I did protect the crust with some loose aluminum foil after the first 25 minutes as recommended). I didn't bother to check for doneness, because the cookie pie looked beautifully golden brown on top and it was midnight and I like gooey cookies anyway. Six hours later, I cut into the pie to finally answer the question of whether baking a cookie in a pie is really worth all the extra fuss.
Answer.... in my opinion, it's not. The cookie part tastes like a whiskey-spiked dark chocolate cookie that is super chocolate-y, with a bland and boring pie crust along for the ride. While I was happy with how "done" (read: deliciously gooey) the cookie part was, I wish I had listened to my intuition and blind-baked the pie crust. It's been a long time since I last made a Baked pie, and even longer since I made one using their all-butter pie crust. The recipe doesn't call for blind-baking, but if you make this, you should definitely blind-baked your crust for 15-20 minutes until it's golden. Without that pre-treatment, my pie bottom just kind of vanished into my gooey cookie layer. I couldn't tell it was there at all, except at the edge where it was just crust (and that piece was, in fairness, perfectly flaky crust). It's certainly not bad. It's a good dessert, and it's something different to offer on a dessert table, but I would rather have just made cookies. Or a pecan pie. Or both. It would have taken the same amount of time, and been better, in my humble opinion.
Please head over to Baked Sunday Mornings to view the recipe and see what the other bakers thought of this pie!
