Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Chocolate Avocado - Week #22

There was a mixed bag of opinions on this pie. I have to admit, I really had my reservations before, during, and after making it. Since this pie, like last week, was a request, I had not really thought about it before but figured I would just go for it and let the chips fall where they may. They fell.

I found quite a number of different pies all claiming to be the quintessential chocolate avocado. In the end, I decided to go with the very simplest (and believe me, it is simple). I ended up making this pie. The author there, however, used a four letter word (at least in this space), however when she mentioned a store bought crust. Oh, the humanity! Anyone who has hung around this blog for any length of time knows that store bought is strictly an anathema in this adventure. So, I made a scratch graham cracker crust and filled it with three avocados, a bag of Hershey's Special Dark chips and 1/3 cup of sugar. I was sincerely hoping that the minimalist architecture would result in a pie that I really liked.

Nope.

I will confess to not being a big fan of the avocado (vegetable? fruit?). Some of the other taste testers (I won't mention names; they're all just guinea pigs to me anyway) enjoyed it a great deal more than I did. My daughter helped construct this one, just like last week. Once again, she liked the end result and once again was disappointed when she got one piece and then the rest of it disappeared to be consumed at work. So, I owe her a pie that stays at home. One of these weeks.

Of those partaking, most did not seem to dislike this one nearly as much as I did -- i.e the mixed bag. Most -- not all -- of the work crowd approved (or at least were too kind to tell me they hated it). At home, as I noted above, it got two thumbs up from my daughter, a grubby thumbs up from my one-year-old -- who will apparently eat anything -- and a mad dash to the sink to spit it out from my wife. If it weren't for my delicate sensibilities I may have done the same.

I stand firmly behind my opinion that of the pies so far that were executed correctly, this was the worst. Believe me, that makes it far from the worst overall. I did have an additional half slice after it had set for a day, and it was better after having the extra time. That, and the prevailing opinion, probably bumped it up a couple of notches in the rankings. Still, I would not ever eat it on purpose again. If there was a redeeming quality, it was that the combination of avocado and chocolate gave the filling an extremely rich, creamy texture. Not enough to overcome the aftertaste, though. At least not for me.

Here are some pictures. It is reasonably pretty. The avocado/chocolate combination resulted in a nice color along with the texture (two redeeming qualities, I guess).



Next Week's Pie

Melanie of incessant badgering about cheesecake and peanut butter cup pie fame is going to be in town for the weekend. Since now, for all of her talk, she seems unable to come up with a flavor, I am going to remake a flawed past recipe, the grasshopper pie. And, since every week needs to include a new pie, a third consecutive week of guinea pig requests: Pineapple.

Enjoy your week, rest well and dream of large women. Any takers on that one?

1 comment:

Kevin said...

Large women..you need to get out of the flour.