Vintage Recipe Roulette: Chocolate Cake Pie? from the 1970s-ish
Look, up in the sky! It's cake! It's pie! It's Cthulhu!
I’m still on my nonsense with this cookbook from the ladies of the Arkansas Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, Design for Living. As a reminder, here’s the cover, which is supposed to represent balance in all areas of your life: education, learning how to fix the dishwasher, and playing tennis by candlelight. It doesn’t mention cooking, but in spots, neither does this cookbook.
Today, I’ve chosen another puzzler of a recipe, Chocolate Cake Pie. I’ve no idea what texture to expect from the name, and the recipe doesn’t offer many clues, either.
I don’t think it’s going to make its own crust, because there is so little flour to sink to the bottom. I also don’t think it’s going to be a souffle, because the instructions for the beaten egg white are so meager — I’m going to guess I’m supposed to go for peaks but probably not super dry ones, or it would say. And it can’t just be lightly beaten, because there would definitely not be enough volume for a big 10” pie pan plus a few little ones unless there were lots of air whipped in, here.
Other than that, all bets are off. Let’s try it! Here are the ingredients (water not pictured, salt added to flour).
I’m going with the cocoa version, but if you ever come across a recipe that calls for a square of chocolate and you only have chips, know that a square was usually one ounce. Keep in mind, though, that it was also usually unsweetened baking chocolate, so it might not come out perfectly unless you add a smidge more in chocolate chip volume, and a smidge less in sugar.
It’s easy enough, or so I hope — it’s still possible I’ll get a total failure if there is some detailed information about the egg white situation that is unrecorded. I’ve made a small sacrifice of a single mini marshmallow at my altar to St. Agnes Aenigma, patron saint of moot questions and unedited recipes, in hopes of her favor.
You may not have a 10” pie pan because that is a weird size — most are 8 or 9”. But, I do have a 10” tart pan and am going to grease it generously in hopes that I can get a slice out of the scalloped edge without a crust. We’ll see. I think I got the volume right, because it filled this pan plus a couple of ramekins. (It’s hard to see, but the filling was actually so near the top that I put it on a tray to get it into the oven so I didn’t spill.) Here it is before and after baking, and as you can see, it doesn’t change much.
It’s hard to tell, but after cooking, it loses some volume, and although I have no idea whether that’s right, it is what I expected — if you want it to hold height, you have to do a lot of fussing to get the souffle right, and then it has to be served immediately for a reason. This recipe says nothing about any of that.
I did manage to get a slice out, but it was not easy. I had to sacrifice the first slice, and then carefully slide the pie server underneath the second, after leaving a second marshmallow for St. Agnes Aenigma, a jumbo this time. She didn’t have any advice.
So…is it cake? pie?
Um.
It’s kind of like pie filling after baking? There’s definitely no “impossible pie” style self-crusting action. There’s just a whisper of a top…what, exactly? It’s not a crust. There’s just a dry layer that’s pretty much the same as the rest. It’s only about a half inch deep in total. Overall, it’s just slightly more egg-textured than custard textured, from the egg white — a big spongy rather than creamy like pudding. A garnish is critical. It tastes pretty good, kind of like hot cocoa. Or maybe a brownie pie, but the mouthfeel is nowhere near that delightful.
I feel like it has neither the best defining characteristic of cake (frosting) nor the best of pie (crust). Instead, it’s like an unfinished version of both. I…do not care for it.
If you are dead-set on making something that is neither cake nor pie, you should definitely try the recipe underneath this one instead, although you may have a devil of a time finding a 7” pie plate. You could try a standard 9” one, but it’s likely to come out significantly differently. Could be a good thing...? Could be a disaster.
These old community cookbooks, man. They’re only for the bold.
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