Dishing columnist Malorie Harris is also the pastry chef for Blue Collar Restaurant Group. This pie is one of her favorite new creations.
“All of the alcohol is cooked out, but it does smell like you could get a buzz off it,” says Ignight (and Blue Collar Restaurant Group) pastry chef Malorie Harris.
What’s not to love about Harris’ new Pumpkin Cream Pie, available at both Ignight and at Dolce now? It’s even personally sized. Perhaps there are people out there that could share the mini (five inches across) pie, but I’m not one of them. Nor would I want to be.
Harris could top cardboard with the maple bourbon reduction (2 parts bourbon for 1 part maple syrup) that accompanies the pie and I’d happily eat it. The fact the pie’s pumpkin cream heart—which is topped by spiced Chantilly, natch—is delicious and rich on its own makes this sweet treat one of my new favs in town. (Did I mention it’s also personal-size??)
The filling is more like a banana cream pie than a standard pumpkin pie. And that dollop of spiced Chantilly on top (which itself is topped by candied pecans) is serious: “I whip mascarpone cheese with sugar and heavy cream then add cinnamon, nutmeg and a tad of pumpkin pie spice,” Harris says.
And the crust?! Harris adds molasses to an otherwise simple graham crust. “The molasses give it a deeper flavor,” she says. “It matches the pumpkin nicely.” Umm, yes.
And then there’s that maple bourbon reduction. “Everything else in the dish is so rich, I like that the bourbon cuts through all of it,” Harris says. “It helps balance it out.”
