Graham cracker crust for chocolate cream pie?
4 years ago
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Windmill cookies for crust and Key Lime Pie were great!
Comments (5)Let me add my congratulations, Mary. I like graham cracker crust, but I love those windmill cookies. I'll bet they'd make a great crust for a cinnamon or pumpkin cheesecake kind of thing, or maybe one of those ice cream based pies... Annie...See MoreLOOKING for: Non-graham cracker crust for key lime pie
Comments (2)This is a post script: I just tried baking the roll out refrigerated crust and it's awful...the pastry has no sweetness. So I guess I'm ISO a crust I can make out of crushed gingersnaps or vanilla cookies, maybe some sliced almonds crunched up in it? (my original post took 24 hours to show up - is there something wrong with this website lately?)...See MoreIs it heresy to buy a ready made graham cracker crust
Comments (46)I used to buy the premade crusts and there's some good ones and some bad ones. I never remember which are good and which are bad since it's so infrequent but it will work. Also, I like to use vanilla wafers for a crumb crust. I've thought about buying the crumbs but really, putting them in a bag and beating the daylights out of them with a rolling pin or a rubber mallet is SO satisfying at times. I can relieve frustration and whomp them cookies so fine they're perfect for a crust. For MY pie, not someone else's. Do it your way and enjoy it....See MoreGraham Cracker Roll Out
Comments (6)Thanks for the questions. It's hard to know sometimes what points need to be spelled out. So when rolling out with plastic, there's plastic top and bottom and no bed of flour. This makes for a relatively clean workspace and also saves a lot of wash water, though it does send plastic to the trash. I haven't found thin enough silicone. Bread wrap (beeswax impregnated linen) might work, but it's probably not smooth enough and likely too thick. Anyway, you chill the crust after rolling, either in the fridge or with ice packs, especially when starting with warm butter. I learned from Stella Parks at Serious Eats that the big secret to handling any kind of crust was to chill it all along the way, chill the bowls and tools, chill the work surface (ice packs on counters). Cold is your friend. After that, just remove the top layer of plastic, invert over the dish, and lay it in. For something as friable as graham cracker, you could also put the dish on top and invert them together. The partial advantage of that is that it's for sure centered, but it takes about 5 hands to do, and it's hard to get those hands under the whole crust, because it'll bomb if you just have one hand and it droops, and if you lift the mat as well, and it seals to the dish, then it won't drop in gracefully and fit down in the bottom and up the sides. Some people have the trick and do it that way. They may have bigger hands than I. :) In general, when one flips the crust on plastic right--dish right next to them--and it's centered enough, you just let the center sag into the dish, lay the edges up the sides, and ease the sides into the corners and flat. When it's in position, gently pull off the plastic, and smooth out any oopsies. So, the first 5 TBSP were melted, and got sucked up super quickly. The latter 3 TBSP were in a Pyrex cup (same as the first batch) in the microwave, when the MW committed harakiri. It was 30 years old and had had many lives, and was only in the kitchen because my speed oven needs fixing (and I hadn't yet put powdered dyes in it, which would have made it ineligible for food). So I put put hot (sink) water in a double sized ramekin and set the dish of butter in that. Ergo, softened. I liked it better than the melted. It combined well and had more body, less will to escape. But this is an unimportant detail. So long as the crumbs are moist enough to stick together there's no problem—specifically, yes, the extra butter makes it moist enough to hold together. A bit of water might have done the trick, but with water one would have to worry about it going mushy since crumbs collapse when wet (and wouldn't have turned into caramel!), whereas flour turns to glue. For GF, one uses egg for both moisture and glue. And it's a disgusting sloppy mess, but the plastic wrap method gets it rolled and into the dish. ETA: It occurs to me that the liquid of the melted butter might make the sugar more liquid and work to hydrate the crumbs, and thereby not roll out so dry. There's no way I could have endured a whole quarter cup of sugar with these graham crackers! Sally might use graham crackers more like what I thought they should be like. In the end, the crispy caramel crust, while not what I'd usually make, bears repeating. I use this rolling method for all my crusts. It's so much easier! I finally figured out that a lot of people were developing gluten as they rolled, and were making thicker crusts, both of which made them easier to manhandle. My preference is thin, but still flaky (regular flour crust) which requires not beating up the crust so much while rolling. But then for other non-gluten crusts, one can use the same method, and be clean and easy with the whole thing....See More- 4 years ago
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