Chocolate Chess Pie
Updated. Originally 14th March 2018
Every bite of this chocolate chess pie is buttery smooth, creamy, and oh so sweet. A creamy chocolate custard like filling in a buttery flaky crust. What could be better? Oh I know, the fact that it’s also so easy to make. It uses simple basic pantry ingredients like butter, sugar, eggs, evaporated milk or cream, cocoa powder and vinegar. Use any pie crust you prefer store bought, the recipe I included, or your own. Whisk together the filling ingredients all in one bowl. Pour into the crust, bake, cool and enjoy! We love to serve this pie with a mile high fluffy whipped cream topping. That is optional and this pie is equally delicious served as is or with a light dusting of powdered sugar or cocoa powder.
What Is A Chess Pie?
Chess pie is a traditional Southern dessert with a rich, buttery, and intensely sweet flavor, typically finished with a caramelized, crackly top. It is made from a mixture of eggs, butter, sugar, cornmeal, and a splash of vinegar. The texture of chess pie is thick yet ultra creamy at the same time, similar to a custard pie. Some of my all time favourite pies fall into this category - cause they are totally irresistible and simple to whip up like my salty honey pie.
Chocolate Chess Pie Recipe Ingredients
- PIE CRUST: Feel free to use my classic simple all butter pie dough recipe included in the recipe or use a store bought pie crust or your very own pie crust recipe. All work great here. If you prefer to make a buttermilk crust use my salty honey pie recipe for the pie dough
- COCOA POWDER: Use unsweetened cocoa powder
- SUGAR: Granulated sugar is what I use for this recipe. Chess pies are suppose to be sweet - if you would like to reduce the sugar by ¼ cup you can but I would not recommend reducing it more than that cause it could affect the texture of the filling as sugar also adds moisture along with sweetness to desserts.
- CORNMEAL: This is a classic ingredients in chess pies. Cornmeal is added to chess pies to thicken the custard filling, provide a subtle, grit-like texture, and help form a caramelized, slightly chewy top crust. It acts as a stabilizer that absorbs moisture, preventing the high-sugar, butter-laden filling from becoming too runny while adding a hint of nutty corn flavor. That being said I have used all purpose flour in its place as a 1-1 substitute and it works fine as well.
- BUTTER: I use unsalted butter and melted for this recipe.
- EGGS: You will need 3 large eggs and room temperature. I prefer to whisk them a little before adding them to the rest of the ingredients so they blend better into the custard.
- VANILLA: I use pure vanilla extract for best flavor.
- EVAPORATED MILK: Evaporated milk is added to chess pies to create a rich, creamy, custard-like texture and to help the filling set properly. Because it has a lower water content than regular milk, it produces a denser, silkier, and less grainy filling while balancing the high sugar content. You can easily swap it out for heavy cream in a pinch.
- VINEGAR: Vinegar is added to chess pies primarily to balance the extreme sweetness of the sugar-heavy, custard-like filling. I use apple cider vinegar or plain white vinegar.
- OPTIONAL ADD INS: For more chocolate flavor you can add in melted chocolate to the filling. 2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped melted with butter. Whisk into the batter as you normally would when adding the melted butter. I like to add some instant espresso powder to help intensify the deep chocolate flavor but that is totally optional.
How To Make Chocolate Chess Pie
- Make Pie Crust/Pie Shell: Whisk the dry ingredients, toss with grated butter or cut in butter then drizzle with water and stir until shaggy dough forms - knead a few times then form into a disc and cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rest and chill for a least 1 hour or overnight. Roll out dough, fit into pie plate crimp and cover with plastic warp and chill while making filling
- Make Pie Filling: Whisk together filling ingredients and preheat oven
- Assemble Pie & Bake: Pour filling into chilled pie crust and bake until golden and set.
- Cool Completely: Allow pie to cool completely before slicing and serving. Better yet I prefer to cool then chill for 1-2 hours before slicing.
Do You Eat Chess Pie Warm Or Cold?
It’s an ideal pie for picnics and potlucks and the like, because it’s delicious at room temperature and, by my standards, even better when cold.
Make Ahead, Storage & Freezing
How To Store Chess Pie?
The pie will keep refrigerated for 3-5 days or at room temperature for 1-2 days.
How to Freeze Chess Pie?
Follow the recipe instructions for baking and cooling the pie completely to room temperature. After that, tightly wrap the entire pie (or any leftovers!) in two layers of plastic wrap and freeze for up to 1-3 months. To serve, thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Serve chilled, or reheat in the microwave or by baking in the oven at 350°F for 10 to 15 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center of the filling comes out warm.
Make Ahead Tips For Chess Pie
You can defiantly make parts of this pie ahead of time to help save you sometime. You can split the recipe up over a few days! The pie crust can be made and refrigerated for up to two days and frozen for up to 3 months. You can even roll out the pie dough and fit it into your pie plate to save you some time then wrap with plastic and store in the fridge or freezer. The custard cannot be made ahead of time but it is super easy to whisk and pour into the crust and bake in a matter of minutes so I don’t recommend that. The baked pie keeps really well so making the whole pie 1-2 days in advance and keeping in the fridge until ready to serve works well too.
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Recipe
Ingredients
For the Pie Crust (makes 1 single pie crust)
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 stick unsalted very cold butter
- 4-8 tablespoons ice water, divided
- 1 large egg, beaten (for egg wash)
For the Chocolate Filling
- ¼ cup Unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon fine cornmeal or all purpose flour
- 1¼ cups granulated sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- Pinch of instant espresso powder,(optional)
- ½ cup unsalted butter (1 stick), melted
- 3 large eggs, room temperature and beaten
- 3 tablespoons evaporated milk or heavy cream
- ½ tablespoon vanilla extract
- ½ tablespoon apple cider vinegar or plain white vinegar
For the Mocha Whipped Cream (optional)
- 1½ cups heavy whipping cream
- 1 heaping tablespoon of powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon instant espresso powder
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
Directions
For the Pie Dough/Crust
- Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Alternatively, if making crust by hand, whisk the flour and salt together in a mixing bowl.
- Remove the butter from the fridge and cut it into several small cubes.
- Scatter the cubes of butter over the surface of the flour in the food processor and pulse 15 to 25 times until the mixture resembles cornmeal with pieces of butter no larger than a pea. Alternatively, cut the butter into the flour using a pastry cutter, a fork, or your fingertips but do not overwork.
- Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of ice water over the butter-flour mixture. Pulse 4 to 5 times to combine. Check to see if the dough is holding together by squeezing a bit of it in your hand — if it holds together, it’s ready; if it breaks apart easily, add a little more water one tbsp at a time. The final dough should not come together in a typical dough, but you should see no more powdery flour and the dough should just be starting to clump together in large crumbs. Alternatively, sprinkle the water over the flour and use two forks to toss the flour to combine. Test the dough and add more water as described above, handling the dough as little as possible with your hands.
- Turn the pie dough out onto a clean work surface. Use your hands to very quickly gather and press the shaggy dough into a thick disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to 4 days (or freeze for up to 3 months; defrost in the fridge overnight before using).
- When ready to use remove the dough disk from fridge, sprinkle your clean working surface and rolling pin with flour. Unwrap the dough and lay it on top of the flour. Working from the middle of the dough outwards, roll the dough into a circle approx 12 inches in diameter (a few inches larger than your pie pan). Be careful to work the dough as little as possible. If the dough cracks when you first start rolling, let it stand for one minute to warm slightly before rolling again. Use more flour if the dough starts to stick. Use a pastry scraper to lift the pastry from the work surface and make sure it’s not sticking.
- Lay your rolling pin on one edge of the pie crust and begin gently rolling the pie crust over the rolling pin with the help of dough scraper if needed. When it’s all rolled up, move it to the 9 inch pie pan (NOT deep dish for this recipe) and gently unroll it into the pie plate and shape or ease it into the plate. Trim the pie dough edges and crimp them using your finger or a fork. Whisk egg well and brush edges with egg wash. I like to do a very thin brush of egg wash all over the rest of the pie too but that is optional. Then place the dough in the fridge while you make the filling.
For Filling, Assembling & Baking Pie
- Once ready to bake preheat oven to 375°F and place a baking sheet in the oven while it preheats. (See recipe notes below for reason)
- In the meantime make the filling. In a large bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder, espresso powder if using, flour, sugar, and salt until combined.
- Stir in the melted butter to combine followed by the whisked eggs, evaporated milk, vanilla extract, and vinegar and mix just until combined.
- Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust.
- Carefully transfer pie directly onto hot baking sheet in oven and bake the pie at 375°F for 10 minutes and then REDUCE TEMPERATURE to 350°F without opening oven and continue to bake for approx 25-35 minutes more or until the edges are golden brown and innermost circle of pie is puffed up and still just a bit jiggly, the top is firm (but not hard) to the touch, and there are a few cracks beginning to form on top.
- Remove pie from oven and cool to room temperature (2-3hours) then store in fridge if not serving immediately.
For The Mocha Whipped Cream
- Once cooled, prepare the whipped cream topping. Beat the heavy cream, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, espresso powder if using and vanilla extract until stiff peaks form.
- Spread the whipped cream on top of the pie and serve with a dusting of cocoa powder.
Recipe Notes
- This recipe doesn’t require blind baking but if you prefer to blind bake the crust first feel free to line the bottom of pie with parchment paper and fill it with bean or brown sugar or pie weights and bake (par bake) at 400°F for 10 minutes then remove and brush the bottom and edges of crust with egg wash. And allow to cool while you make your filling. Then add the filling and bake as directed in recipe above. If you are blind baking I STRONGLY advise using a pie guard when baking pie after adding the filling otherwise it edges of pie will burn
- Make sure to chill or freeze pie crust while making the filling - I always stick mine in the freezer while prepping the filling and preheating the oven.
- Make sure all you pie crust ingredients are ice cold and your filling ingredients are room temperature
- I recommend placing pie on a sheet pan to bake as custard pies can get bubbly and messy plus the hot sheet pan helps cook the bottom crust better preventing a soggy bottom.
- Some recipes for this particular pie recommend pouring the filling into crust through a fine mesh sieve but I have never done this - I find that the corn meal adds a really nice texture to the pie even when I have used a larger grain cornmeal (not recommended but just mentioned because that is all I had in my pantry and it still worked our deliciously)
