Food52
One of the many wonderful things about being married has been learning about and taking forward the traditions of both of our families. For me, the most routinely appreciated of these is breakfast pie. I’m not sure how I went my whole life without realizing the magic of dessert for breakfast, but it almost out-ranks in magnitude the adjustment to my young world view that was breakfast for dinner, which I had to go a full ten years of my life without experiencing. You would think that someone as traumatized as I obviously was by this would be bitter, but no, instead I share with you what may be my favorite breakfast pie yet. By no means is this pie restricted to breakfast, though, as it can be (and has been) enjoyed at any time of day. This pie uses a slow cooker as a bain-marie to make the pudding-like filling, which was modestly adapted from hardlikearmour’s Coconut Cajeta & Chocolate Fondue recipe. Using a slow cooker means that, even though this recipe takes a day to enjoy, little hands-on effort is required to yield a delicious and reasonably healthy pie. I like to start this pie on Saturday evening, so that we have pie to cope with the gravity that is Monday. The pie can be made vegan by using a vegan butter substitute and vegan graham crackers to make the crust. I typically use either E. Guittard or Scharffen Berger chocolates because they are both tree nut allergy friendly, but your favorite classy chocolate will work great. I have even supplemented this recipe with Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips when running low on the good stuff; the filling cooked similarly, though it did lose some of that deep chocolate flavor. For the whipped topping, I have only ever had luck using Thai Kitchen full-fat organic coconut milk, as other brands seems to never fully separate between the coconut water and the cream, and you want a pretty dry cream. It is absolutely critical that both your canned coconut milk and mixing bowl be very cold, which is why our mixing bowl now lives in the freezer.
