I did have proper food after, but I was so eager to try the pie! Before GW, pie was an ordeal, and I mostly just made apple. For a holiday. For the Family. But then Rhome410 taught me about using the food processor, Peke introduced me to the Breville food processor, FOAS showed me where to get Perfect-a-Crust rings that Grainlady taught us to use, and making pie now is time consuming, maybe, but really as easy as pie. :) I still make Rhome410's regular flour FP crust as my go-to (and Stella Parks's pinch dough if without FP--the pastry blender is now a quaint artifact, never to be sworn at again!), and I have a whole wheat one, which I use for apple now, with some cinnamon in the dough.

Some of you may remember that I was looking for a chocolate crust awhile back. I found one, coincidentally with a pumpkin recipe (also got some interesting other doughs from CF). It's pretty straightforward. I finally made it a couple days ahead of time, because pie wasn't getting made for lack of time. The result is less ... sticky? ... and more likely to tear and crack than whole wheat. Since, Grainlady-following, I roll between plastic wrap, and on top of a silpat to make it not slide around, I could just do the dish inverted on top and get a hand under the silpat to turn it into the dish. Even so, I had a big tear and a few edge oopsies. The dough accepts patching extremely well. This foretold the end result. Baked, it has some flakiness but sort of halfway to a cookie texture. Fair enough. It's fine. I'm a cocoa powder snob, but I thought Valrhona would be overpowering, so used raw. It still came out very chocolatey tasting, and maybe a more plebian cocoa powder, or less of it, would be more balanced. And here I'd been worried it might be wimpy! I don't know if the couple days in the fridge made a difference on the flavor. I did scant the sugar and salt.

I've gotten very brave with pies recently, and they seem to come out. I wanted actual pumpkin, and was baking it off of my banana chocolate caramel pie. So, chunks of roasted pumpkin in the bottom and pumpkin in the custard to fill. But when I went to make the caramel, I kind of forgot what I was doing and put stuff in before the sugar was melted, and caramelizing, but I'd preciously been pondering about caramel custard rather than ribbons of caramel sauce, and I guess my subconscious took me there when consciously I was meaning to make caramel sauce. Anyway, the spiced sugar-milk was awesome, so I just blungered on and added it to eggs to make the custard base.

The chocolate chips were old scraps, and needed using. They help bring the flavors together because of the intensity of the chocolate crust, but they didn't melt, and would have been better fresher or as minichips. Though they do make a nice texture foil to the creaminess of the custard and the softness of the pumpkin. The pear bits melted. They were there for sweetness because the pumpkin was kind of sour, so did their job.

The result is pretty much pumpkin pie. I like the chunks and wouldn't hesitate to go two layers with them. It's really good. :)

Here is what I did, to the best of my recollection, in case you want the details. :)

Ingredients

1 largish Sugar Pie pumpkin, halved, cleaned and roasted well done

Chocolate chips to scatter, about 1/2 cup?

2 yellow Bartlett pears, peeled and diced small

1 chocolate pie crust

Custard

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1.5 cups 6% milk warmed in MW

4 large eggs

1 cup of the pumpkin, squished

1/8 c of the diced pears, squished

2 TBSP butter

1 Small pinch flor de sal salt

1 good sprinkle dash Smoked Spanish Paprika

2 + good sprinkle dashes Ceylon Cinnamon

1 good sprinkle dash Berbere/North African Penzey's (cayenne red pepper, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, cardamom, cumin, black pepper, allspice, turmeric, cloves, Ceylon cinnamon and coriander)

Directions

Chocolate pie crust. I used raw cocoa powder and ABC flour, scanted sugar and salt. Well chilled in a plastic bag, rolled out with plastic and set into a 10" spray oiled dish. Friable. Use silpat to flip into dish. Cover and chill in dish.

Slice into six parts and peel half pumpkin, cut strips into about 1" pieces. Squish a cup of pumpkin and cut the rest of the other half as above.

Dice the pears small. Add about 1/3 of one pear, diced, to the pumpkin and squish.

Warm milk in microwave.

Put sugar in a small enamelled pan and heat on low, stirring. Add butter. When the butter is melted, add the warmed milk slowly. Keep stirring. when it reduces to a milk texture, remove from heat. Let cool awhile.

Beat eggs in a good sized mixing bowl. Add the milk bit by bit, stirring, so as not to cook the eggs. Add the squished pumpkin/pear and mix well.

Preheat oven to 425° F

Remove crust from chiller. Line the bottom with pumpkin pieces. Sprinkle milk chocolate chips around loosely. Pour in enough custard to cover well, saving enough to top the pie.

Sprinkle the pear bits around and over with the rest of the custard.

Sprinkle half milk and half semi-sweet chips on top.

Bake for 15 minutes then turn down the oven to 375° F and bake for another 30-45 minutes until firm in the middle.