Wednesday 10 December 2014

'Darth Vader' No-Bake Peppermint and Oreo Pie

Now and then hubby and I will watch The One Pot Chef YouTube videos together to get some ideas for easy recipes. During one of these sessions, we came across grasshopper pie and hubby found it really attractive. And so, my kids and I made this simple but yet delectable no-bake dessert for my hubby's birthday :).

Darth Vader for a Star-Wars fan!

There are so many possibilities to pretty up this simple cake/pie, such as making a rainbow, marbled or ombre version, decorating with buttercream/fresh cream and/or shaved chocolate. I chose to make use of coffee art drawing to create a character from my hubby's favourite show, using charcoal as a natural source of food colouring.

The recipe is of course adapted from The One Pot Chef. I left out dark chocolate as we have just recovered from cough. I used more melted butter and less Oreo cookie cream. I doubled the amount of peppermint essence and find that it is just nicely strong enough but not overwhelming. I found the proportion of milk too much in the original recipe and had to freeze the pie in order for the filling to set. I used one-third of the portion of the original recipe as only the few of us are eating it. But overall it was delicious! Very much like eating peppermint ice-cream (one of our favourite flavours!) on an Oreo cookie base :).

This grasshopper pie is so easy to make that young kids can be involved in this "bake". Baking with kids is a lot slower, messier and less professional looking but so much more fun!

Ingredients (makes two 4" round or one 6" round pan):
Base
100g Oreo cookies
30g dark chocolate (Optional. I left this out.)
40g unsalted butter, melted

Filling
50g white marshmallows
66g white chocolate
60ml milk (I used 80ml and the filling needed to be frozen to set.)
2/3 tsp peppermint essence (Add more or less according to preference)
200ml whipping cream
1/2 tsp liquid green food colouring
1/3 tsp charcoal powder

Steps:
1. Place the Oreo cookies and chocolate in a processor and grind until fine. Alternatively, you can do the manual way like me and get the kids to help to pound the cookies until they are powder-like. Scrape off the cream first if you are doing it the manual way.

Working hard!

2. Melt the butter and mix some or all of the Oreo cookie cream into the melted butter if you scraped it off earlier. Pour the melted butter onto the crushed cookies. My elder kid exclaimed "Mama, look! There's a heart-shape there! Quick take a photo!" This was totally unintentional and it brought smiles to our faces :).

Molten heart surrounded by Oreo sandy shore!

Mix well and spoon the mixture into the springform pans. You may want to line the base with baking sheet for easy removal. Press the crushed cookie mixture with a flat bottomed glass or a metal spoon. Chill for 30 minutes or until set.


3. Put milk, marshmallows and white chocolate into a saucepan.

Kids can help to measure and weigh ingredients

Melt over low heat while stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add in peppermint essence. Stir to mix it in. Set aside to cool to room temperature.


4. Use an electric mixer to whip whipping cream until soft peaks form.


Gradually add the cooled marshmellow mixture into the cream, folding in until well combined with each addition. Original recipe mentions folding the cream into the marshmallow mixture but I find it easier to incorporate the marshmellow mixture into the cream.

5. If you prefer the pie without artificial colouring, you may pour the mixture onto the cookie base and chill for 3-4 hours at this point before serving. I scooped out a bit of the filling mixture and coloured one portion black with charcoal powder (left another portion white). I added green food colouring to the remaining bulk of the filling mixture.

My little helper at work here

 I made use of a small spoon and toothpicks to create the drawing. You can choose to pipe but I didn't feel like wasting the batter on piping bags. Any mistakes can be corrected by adding a bit of "batter" of the right colour with a toothpick. This requires some patience but I had fun because this doesn't have to be done to perfection :).

Darth Vader coffee art style drawing!

All of us couldn't wait to try it!

Close-up view of a slice. Pardon the bad slicing. We were eager to eat :p.

All of us loved this simple dessert! Hope you can try this out too of you happen to love peppermint :).

With lots of love,
Phay Shing & the kids


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