Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas: Crème de Menthe Pie

Merry Christmas! I just wrapped up my Christmas dinner. The leftovers are in the refrigerator, the counters are wiped, and the dishes are in the dishwasher.




For the past few years, I have hosted Christmas dinner at my house. It is a small crowd, but it is fun to have the liberty to cook whatever I want to. Since my in-laws have always had more conservative palettes, I don't make anything too prolific, but I do modify the menu each year. We start the afternoon with a few appetizers, followed by dinner, and capped off with the one constant each year - Crème de Menthe Pie.





Glazed Ham



Seasoned Corn





For as long as I can remember, my family has had Crème de Menthe Pie for dessert on Christmas dinner. This was a tradition I continued when we lived in NYC and I made it for our friends for our pre-Christmas dinner. When I started hosting Christmas dinner myself, there was no doubt what I would make for dessert. Although my mother, my sister, and I are all in different places on Christmas night, celebrating with our respective in-laws, this is a dessert that we all still make. (In fact, I wound up with two pies in my freezer tonight, as my parents stopped by my house for appetizers, but forgot their pie when they ventured on to their next destination.)

There are so many memories associated with this dessert, but it is also reminiscent of my favorite hard-serve ice cream flavor - mint chocolate chip. You can serve the pie with whipped cream if you like, but I think it is perfect without.

Crème de Menthe Pie
Ingredients
3 pints vanilla ice cream
5 Tablespoons crème de menthe liqueur
2 cups chocolate wafer crumbs (such as Oreos)
1/3 cup butter, softened
Chocolate Sauce (recipe follows)

Directions
Combine wafer crumbs (if using Oreos, crumble in food processor) with butter and press into 10” spring form pan (press throughout bottom of pan, and up to 1 inch along sides of pan). Refrigerate until well chilled, about 1 hour.

Turn ice cream into large bowl to soften. Pour crème de menthe over ice cream and stir to incorporate. Fill chilled wafer shell with ice cream mixture. Freeze. Make chocolate sauce.

Chocolate Sauce:
Ingredients
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate
½ cup water
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
4 ½ Tablespoons butter
¾ teaspoon vanilla

Directions
In a small saucepan, combine chocolate with water. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until chocolate is melted. Add sugar and salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until sugar is melted and mixture is thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla. Cool thoroughly. Then drizzle over top of pie and return to freezer until firm.




4 comments:

  1. I can't believe that she forgot it in your freezer!!! The cousins are not going to be happy...You HAVE to have Creme di Menthe pie on Christmas!!!

    -Sister

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  2. ...but no one reminded me...

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  3. Mmmm.... looks delicious!! I love chocolate and mint. Hope you had a very Merry Christmas with your family. :)

    Thought you'd appreciate this -- DH and I just purchased a D-SLR camera yesterday with Christmas money. One of the first things he said when he took it out of the box: "Now I have to take a Katie (Your Maiden Name) picture." Because your blog pics are so gorgeous, of course. And he was getting annoyed because he couldn't instantly take good manual focus pictures, so he grabbed the instruction book and sat down in a chair to read about the camera. When I walked by later, I asked how it was going, and he said, "Good, I'm reading the Katie (Your Maiden Name) section." :) You are inspiring him, obviously.

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  4. yummy food,
    delicious mood,
    what an amazing cook,
    thank you for the share:)

    take good care.

    ReplyDelete