a s***** little citrus pie!
butter! sour cream! chocolate! crust!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello,
I’m sorry for censoring the subject line, but I was afraid if I put the word “slutty” in there, it would have been sent to spam. It still might have gotten sent to spam, but I hope it didn’t. Boo, censorship! Slutty pie forever!
As you very well may know, it’s citrus season. This is a very good, very involved, very worth-it citrus salad I developed last year. I stand by it. You should make it. If you’re looking for something less involved, lately, I’ve been peeling oranges and then slicing them into discs and then sprinkling those discs with za’atar and nutritional yeast, and a little bit of salt. It’s literally the best 3 pm snack you’ve ever had. Maybe one day I’ll make it into a proper salad. Until then, snack away!
Back to pie.
Actually, we’re going to wait on pie and talk about crust. I love crust. Crust might just be my favorite part of a pie. Even my favorite part of pizza pie. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t eat the crust on their pizza, you need to be eating better pizza. In middle school, the girls I sat with at lunch didn’t eat their pizza crust, and because my parents put me on Weight Watchers and I wasn’t allowed to eat pizza, sometimes I would eat their crust. (A formative moment for me? Probably. That’s what therapy is for.)
Anyway!
This pie has a thick, tall crust. It’s made denser with the addition of extra butter and some coconut oil, and it’s baked at a high temperature because, in addition to it being tall and thick, I also want it to be rich and deeply tasty. Almost burnt, but not burnt. But almost. Toffee vibes etc.
On ATK Next Gen, I sometimes got dinged (by sometimes, I mean really only once by Jamie Bissonnette, and I will not forgive or forget!!) for cooking food “Garrett’s way” instead of the way other people might want things to be. But this is my newsletter! And my slutty pie! So it’s gonna be my way!
What makes it slutty, you might ask. Well, there’s lots of butter in the crust. And salt. There’s sour cream in the filling and extra egg yolks. It’s inspired by this place in Key West that dips slices of key lime pie in chocolate, so, yes, this pie is covered in chocolate. It’s finished with more salt. I love salt. And I love this pie.
Here are a few important things to note about this pie:
It calls for a 10-inch springform pan. If you don’t have one, this is a great excuse to get one. If you really don’t want to do that, you can use a deep dish 10-inch pie pan. Deep dish because this makes a lot of pie.
This isn’t a hard pie to make, but you should spend some quality time with the crust. Get your hands dirty and really get in there. Feel around. Get to know your food! It might be tempting to compress the crumbs to build up the walls of the pie, but shortcuts are for losers! Take your time and only (gently!) press it all down at the end.
Cooling matters! I am one of the most impatient people in the world when it comes to food. I wanted to eat ten minutes ago. But this pie benefits from total and complete cooling—a bummer, but a bummer that is so, so worth it in the end.
Don’t overbake it! When you pull it out of the oven, it’ll be jiggly. That’s good and perfect and lovely and wonderful and necessary and beautiful and nice. If you’re nervous, that’s ok. Be nervous. Push through. I believe in you.
Alright, here’s the pie. And here are three songs I’ve really been into this week if you need something to listen to while you bake the pie:
slutty little citrus pie: ingredients
for the crust
4 cups gingersnap cookie crumbs: this is the amount of crumbs I got from crushing up an entire one-lb box of Nabisco Ginger Snaps. I would recommend you do the same. You need the cookies to be crispy and crunchy and crumbly. Ostensibly, you could use graham crackers, but I wouldn’t if I didn’t absolutely have to.
8 tablespoons butter: that’s a whole stick!
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 tablespoon meyer lemon zest: we’ll talk about the meyer lemon of it all in a minute
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar: dark or light works fine, and if you don’t have any and really don’t want to buy any, I won’t tell anyone if you use plain ol’ granulated sugar
for the filling
1 1/4 cups meyer lemon juice (about 7 lemons): meyer lemon just might be my favorite citrus—it’s really the impetus behind this whole pie, and because it’s citrus season, you should be able to find them pretty much anywhere, however! if you can’t! you can approximate the flavor by substituting 1/2 a cup of fresh orange juice (tangerine if you can find them) and 3/4 cup of lemon juice. You can also make this with lime juice if that’s your thing. I called it “citrus pie” because it’ll all pretty much work!
2 tablespoons meyer lemon zest: or, you know, whatever citrus you’re using
28 oz sweetened condensed milk: that’s two 14 oz cans—math and science, baby!
1 cup full-fat sour cream: full! fat!
6 egg yolks: I almost topped this with meringue so the egg whites didn’t go to waste, but just save them and make a pavlova!
a big pinch of kosher salt
for the topping
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons coconut oil
a showering of flaky salt: optional but amazing if you have it
1 tablespoon meyer lemon zest: what I would do is reserve a whole lemon (or another piece of citrus) and just zest it overtop of the pie right before you serve
slutty little citrus pie: method
for the crust
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and zest three or four lemons into a small bowl. This will account for the two tablespoons you need for the filling and one that you need for the crust. Next, wrap the outside of your springform pan in aluminum foil and set aside. (You’re wrapping it because, on occasion, the butter/coconut oil mixture has seeped out the seams while baking, and you don’t want that on the bottom of your oven!)
In a bowl, melt eight tablespoons of butter plus two tablespoons of coconut oil in the microwave and set aside.
Working in batches, pulse your ginger snaps in a food processor until they’re the texture of very coarse sand. I’d prefer you under process than over process here. If the cookies are too fine, it’ll make the crust tough instead of crumbly. You can also do this by hand, but if you have a food processor, this is a great time to use it.
Once crushed, in a large bowl, combine ginger snaps, two tablespoons brown sugar, one tablespoon zest, one teaspoon kosher salt, and the butter and coconut oil mixture. Mix well until everything is incorporated and all of the cookie crumbs look wet.
Dump the mixture into the springform pan and gently work it up the sides until there’s only about a half inch of space between the crust and the top of the pan. Try to distribute the crust as evenly as possible, about a quarter inch of thickness all around. Pay special attention to where the base of the pan meets the sides. Get your fingers in there and make sure it’s not too thick. Once you’re happy with it, press the crumbs lightly on the base of the pan and up the sides using the back of your hand or a measuring cup.
Bake for ten minutes, remove from the oven, and let cool. Drop the oven temperature to 350.
for the filling
While your crust cools, in a large bowl, combine the egg yolks and sweetened condensed milk and whip well. Like, really well. With a whisk. For two or so minutes.
Add the sour cream, meyer lemon juice, zest, and a big pinch of kosher salt. Whisk vigorously until smooth, so, another two or so minutes. Try and get some air in there!
Pour the mixture into the cooled crust and return to the oven to bake for 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack, or if your stove has grates, you can set it there. Anywhere that lets some air circulate under it to help it cool more quickly. It’ll still take a couple hours (at least two, probably three!). RESIST THE URGE TO PUT IT IN THE REFRIGERATOR BEFORE IT IS COOLED! The heat will create condensation around the crust in the fridge, and then, instead of a beautiful crispy, deeply toasty crust, you’ll have a soggy blah, something that’s not as good.
After it’s COOLED COMPLETELY, move it to the fridge, covered or uncovered (it’s totally up to you; I’ve done it both ways, and it’s been fine) for another two hours or overnight.
for the topping
Now, you can do this step right before the step above, or you can do it about 20 minutes before serving—choose your own adventure here.
Combine the chocolate chips and remaining two tablespoons of coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at one-minute intervals, stirring in between, until the mixture is melted. (Like, two minutes.)
Mix well and make sure everything is incorporated, then pour into the center of the pie. Holding the pie in your hands, rotate it to spread the mixture to coat the surface of the pie evenly. I like to leave about a quarter inch of the pie still peeking out because I think it looks nice, but you do you.
Return to the refrigerator to cool for 20 minutes (or, if you did this step before putting it in for the first time, two hours), just until the chocolate shell is hardened.
for serving
Remove from the refrigerator and then remove from the springform pan (if you’re not using a springform, just serve directly out of whatever vessel you used). Using a knife or an offset spatula if you have one, slide it between the crust and the springform base. If cooled completely, the pie should be sturdy enough to slide off the spring form and onto a serving platter without issue. If that makes you nervous, skip it! Serve it with the base still underneath; that’s totally fine!
Finish with a big shower of flaky salt and grate the reserved piece of citrus over the top. The chocolate shell will crack as you cut into it. That’s ok! It’s supposed to! You can also hit it with the back of a spoon the way you might a crème brûlée when you’re eating it to break it up further. Dessert and a show!
Alright, that’s it! I know it seems like a lot of information, but that’s just because I like to give a lot of information. In reality, it’s an extremely easy and very delicious pie to make. Here’s some unsolicited feedback I got from my roommate when he discovered the pie in our fridge:
And that was the first iteration! I made four more before I got it to where I wanted it to be. So go forth, and make this slutty little citrus pie.
xoxo,
G
literally we are all here for Garrett's way, plz never change <3