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French silk pie with chocolate-coffee (grounds) crust

French silk pie with chocolate-coffee (grounds) crust

Pies

As a kid, I loved Edy's French Silk ice cream, and I'm not entirely sure why, I didn't enjoy coffee, or anything else that was coffee-flavored really, but I fell for that light, whipped texture of mocha ice cream flecked with chocolate shards and my mom and I had a carton of it on hand in the freezer pretty much at all times. I enjoyed the occasional slice of French Silk pie, too, but never understood why the ice cream was coffee-flavored, but the pie typically was not. This pie was created out of my desire to bring those flavors together. For the coffee grounds, any grind will do: I've made this with coarse grounds from a French press as well as fine grounds from a drip coffeemaker. While the grind won't impact the results, the quality of the coffee will, a high-quality coffee will lend a lot of flavor to the final pie, older, less flavorful beans, not as much. I enjoy the very pronounced coffee flavor that you get from the grounds from fresh beans, but if you're wary of too much of a good thing, you can always dial back the coffee flavor by only using a couple of tablespoons of grounds in the crust if desired. As written, this recipe requires planning ahead to allow time to make coffee (ground)-infused whipped cream. If you don't want to wait, feel free to top your pie with plain whipped cream instead. For the chocolate cookies, any crunchy chocolate variety will work, whether wafer-shaped or otherwise (I used Field Day Cocoa Chip Wildlife Friends Cookies). It will take about 9 ounces to get the 2 cups of cookie crumbs you need. I crush them in a mini food processor, but a zip-top bag and a rolling pin works, too. The chocolate filling is an amalgamation from multiple French Silk Pie recipes, including ones from <a href="http://www.thevanillabeanblog.com/2011/11/french-silk-pie.html">The Vanilla Bean Blog</a> and <a href="https://cupofjo.com/2014/05/no-bake-french-silk-pie/">Half Baked Harvest (via Cup of Jo)</a>. And yes, the eggs are raw. If this is a concern, use pasteurized eggs and/or don't serve this pie to anyone with a compromised immune system.