Chocolate Chiffon Pie

If you've heard of Chocolate Chiffon Pie but have never tried it, you're not alone. Even though the light, airy, mousse-like pies have been around since the 1920s and were popular for decades, they fell out of favor for different reasons. One might be the raw egg whites. That's what put me off it for so long. But it also might be that like Baked Alaska, it lost popularity due to competition from other desserts. Whatever the case, I felt compelled to try Chocolate Chiffon Pie this week, raw eggs and all.

Chocolate Chiffon Pie History

While light gelatin desserts pre-dated Chiffon Pie, the version we know was supposedly "invented" in 1926 by Monroe Boston Strause. Nicknamed The Pie King, Strause went on to write a book on pie called Pie Marches On, which was for businesses rather than home bakers. He had quite a sense of humor (there's a section in the book called "Taking the Cus out of Custard" and was quite opinionated, so it's easy to see why he was so popular. Anyhow, Chiffons in the book (which I was able to find online) involve fruit, but he does have chocolate and vanilla flavors, both of which call for cornstarch, interestingly. The book doesn't say how Chiffon got its name, but it's believed to have come from Strause's mother who described its texture "as delicate as a pile of chiffons". So let's march on to this pie!

Maida Heatter's Chocolate Chiffon Pie Ingredients

This one's my version of Maida Heatter's from The Book of Great Chocolate Desserts. I say "take" because I made hers as written and with changes and liked the changed version best. The recipe calls for plain gelatin, whole milk, eggs, semisweet or dark chocolate, sugar, instant coffee powder and loads of cream. The crust can be either graham cracker of pastry. The one in the photo below is a rolled graham cracker crust which I'll share soon.

Raw Egg Whites

My version of the pie calls for 2 yolks and 3 uncooked whipped egg whites. After perusing the statistics of getting salmonella from raw eggs, I'm not too worried about getting it myself, but I wouldn't serve this to the immunocompromised or anyone really without informing them it has raw egg whites. Use your own judgment on egg safety. Now that I've tried the raw egg white version a couple of times, I'm going to test with pasteurized egg whites or maybe try heating the egg whites and sugar to 160F before whipping. After all, the double boiler's already out!

Equipment

This recipe involves a lot of equipment. You'll need double boiler and either a stand mixer with two mixing bowls or a handheld mixer and 2 large bowls. And the recipe calls for an ice bath, but which is just a big bowl of ice water that is large enough to submerge the top of your double boiler in. A chopper/grinder is optional. For the grinding the crackers, I used my Hamilton Beach Stack and Press. It's inexpensive and powerful enough to make nut butter. I love it! I used a KitchenAid with a small and medium mixing bowl for whipping whites and cream, and for the ice bath, I used a metal bowl. This is not a recipe you'd tackle at an AirBB or a kitchen you're not real familiar with. Or at least not the first time around!

Crust

This pie works well with graham cracker crust, but you can also make Chocolate Chiffon Pie with chocolate sandwich cookies or any other crust. The crust in the first photo is kind of a mess due to an experiment I won't go into yet, but it was fine. The crust in the second photo was the rolled graham cracker crust I mentioned earlier. It's a fun one because you actually make a graham cracker flavor dough, roll it out, press it in the pan and end up with a sliceable, liftable, tender crust that tastes like the cookie part of a Moon Pie.

What Kind of Chocolate to Use

The original recipe calls for semisweet. I personally wouldn't use semisweet chocolate chips here, but rather any kind of semisweet, bittersweet or dark chocolate bar. 7 ounces, chopped from a Trader Joe's Pound Plus, works perfectly. If you make the pie and love it, you could continue using that or splurge on Guittard disks. I also did not grind the chocolate (as Maida does) for my best pie, I just chopped it into shards. That's easy to do when you are chopping off a Trader Joe's block. I just don't think grinding is necessary with today's chocolate.

Notes and Tips

• I mentioned the equipment, but there are work-arounds. For instance, you could use a pre-made pie shell or crush your own graham crackers, chop the chocolate instead of grinding and skip having to use a chopper. You also do not have to have a stand mixer. Instead, you can use two mixing bowls and a good hand-held mixer. They make powerful ones these days so it won't take much longer.
• Maida's recipe calls for a tablespoon of gelatin, but you only need 2 ½ teaspoons, which is how much gelatin is in a typical packet. So many recipes mention an envelope as having a tablespoon, but Knox brand only has 2 ½ teaspoons.
• Softening gelatin in milk takes twice as long as it does in water. Be sure to let it stand for a good 5 minutes and also be sure that the powder is coated in the milk. If not, you might have little blobs of clumped undissolved gelatin that don't go away when heated.
• Maida's recipe says to grind the chocolate. I tried this and the filling was very smooth, however I'm not sure that was because of the ground chocolate. The fillings I made with chopped chocolate were just as good.
• The coffee adds flavor, but you can use a little vanilla instead.
• Chiffon Pie is not known to freeze well. However, since this one has so much chocolate and cream, I froze a piece to see what would happen. After about 8 hours in the freezer, I thawed it in the refrigerator and the texture was just fine. I then froze half a pie and have yet to take it out.

A Much Easier Chocolate Chiffon Knock-Off

If you want an easier pie and/or don't want to have to think about egg safety, you can try the good old Hershey Bar Pie . The recipe needs a new photo, but it's a tasty pie and a lot less work. I plan on making it again this week so I can post a new photo.

Recipe