Behold, the custard cookie pie

Thank you for reading Letters from Paris on the Genesee! If you have not already, please subscribe and this newsletter will appear in your inbox every Tuesday morning. You can also follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more piping hot content.

I don’t know how exactly the idea popped into my head. Several weeks ago, I was rifling through my freezer looking for something, and noticed that I still had some leftover cookie dough. And for whatever reason, in that moment, I decided I was going to make a pie using it. Several twists and turns later, after multiple instances where I thought this desert was 100% dead on arrival, it turns out… it was extremely good. I call it custard cookie pie.

Earlier in quarantine, I made a batch of Bravetart’s chocolate chip cookies, but added in 2.5 ounces malted milk powder and approx. 4 ounces sliced almonds. They were, without question, the best cookies I ever made in my life. I just happened to have so much dough that I could freeze about a third of it.

I have only made a handful of pies in my life, and had always felt like they were one of the tougher baked goods to make. Any time I did make one, I always followed the recipe to the most minute detail, sure in the knowledge that even the slightest deviation from the recipe would spell certain ruin. I know a lot of people feel this way about baking in general, and by now I know that’s total nonsense, but that feeling still persists with me when it comes to pies. My decision to make a cookie dough pie crust made little sense at the time, and even less when I reflect on it.

Nevertheless, I spent the following weeks mulling over the optimal cookie dough pie arrangement. I knew I wanted to make some kind of pudding filling and serve it cold, but I changed my mind several times between chocolate and vanilla pudding, or more of a traditional custard. Eventually, my love for bright yellow, rich, eggy custard won out, and I decided I was going to bring this concoction to life for Memorial Day weekend.

As far as I could tell, cookie dough pie crust isn’t really a thing. There’s cookie bars with stuff on them, and I also saw a few recipes for pies with raw cookie dough crust, but nothing for a blind-baked cookie dough pie holding a custard filling. This was fresh powder for me to ski down.

I was committed to the idea of a single cookie the size of the pie plate, so I wasn’t interested in crushing the cookies up like a graham cracker crust. I followed the instructions from the original cookie recipe and baked it slightly longer to help it cook through and set the crumb all the way in the middle. Here was my first brush with disaster, as the cookie dough puffed up so much in the middle that it was basically flat across the top. Instead of making a cookie dough pie, I made one 9-inch chocolate chip cookie. Not great! Unsure of what to do, I took a spoon and pushed the dough back down. Was it ruined? I don’t know, maybe? It certainly didn’t look great, but no one would see the top of the crust so we pressed on.

At the same time the crust was baking, I started on the custard. I opted to use this vanilla custard recipe from Epicurious. Everything seemed to go off without a hitch, and after whisking the custard on the stove for about 20 minutes waiting for it to thicken and hit 170 degrees on the dot, I put it in the fridge overnight to set.

Except it didn’t set.

After 10 hours in the fridge, the custard was a thin soup. I didn’t have enough eggs and milk to make another batch, so I did some research and as luck would have it, the custard was not beyond saving. The instructions on the recipe I used were wrong. Just not correct. Instead of heating it to 170 degrees, it needed to be scalded, or heated to near boiling and so it’s bubbling at the edges and steaming. So back in the pot it went, and after a quick cook it had thickened to the texture I was looking for. It immediately went into the cookie crust, and it then went into the oven at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes to finish setting, as per the instructions of this custard pie recipe from King Arthur.

At this point, my primary concern wasn’t the taste of the custard, but the texture. I was convinced that I had overcooked it the second time, and I was going to get a pie filled with sweet scrambled eggs. The pie had to go back to room temperature and then chill in the fridge before serving, and I spent those hours imagining the ways in which I had botched this recipe.

As luck would have it, though, I somehow landed this plane. The crust didn’t get soggy, and the custard and cookie tasted marvelous together. Served with some fresh whipped cream, it was a sweet victory snatched repeatedly from the jaws of defeat. It was also extremely heavy, so eating more than one piece is asking for an extended turn on the couch for recovery.

It wasn’t without its issues, however. The combination of the custard and the cookie dough was tooth-shatteringly sweet and very rich, and may be a bit much for some people. The crust was also quite tough to cut through compared to a regular crust, but it did cut cleanly and maintained its structure all the way to the plate.

It isn’t perfect, by any means. It’s a lot. But for a weird dish that popped into my head without warning, I would say it worked out pretty well. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have another piece and immediately regret it.