Sometimes all it takes is a simple question – “you wanna bring one of your famous desserts?” – to get the brain parts firing (when it comes to food, it doesn’t take much).
I have been known, among those who know, to get experimental in the kitchen…often taking existing foods and re-presenting them in new forms (i.e. Spinach Pie as a Mac ‘n Cheese) or combining two foods that might not otherwise be combined (i.e. Bacon, Lettuce & Mango Sandwich). Some of these experiments are wonderful successes or surprises and others glorious failures (for the record, both of the above: successes). So recently, when asked to bring desserts to a cookout, I got creative.
A handful of ideas popped into my noggin and I settled on two, determining to save the rest for another day. So now I present “the making of” Brownie-Cookie Pie and Ring Ding Bread Pudding.
Brownie-Cookie Pie came first. The concept of baking a brownie in a pie crust isn’t the most novel idea, as a matter of fact, as much as the idea occurred to me one day, I’ve seen it out in the world, so I wasn’t the only one. As a result, I tried to think of a way to re-think it. I was considering a graham cracker or Oreo cookie crust (and with the graham cracker, maybe a marshmallow icing/frosting, essentially making a s’mores pie), but worried the baking time for the brownie filling could lead to a dry or even burnt crust. Talking it out with someone, they misunderstood, thinking I meant a pie crust made out of cookie dough…an actual cookie crust…an idea I’d (surprisingly) not even considered! And with that I was off to the races.
The prep was pretty simple, really. It started with the forming of the crust:
