Easy Chocolate Mud Pie Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making a decadent chocolatey mud pie. So let's get started. First off, set your oven to 350 so it's nice and hot, and now you wanna grab about 25 chocolate sandwich cookies, aka Oreos, and pop them right into your food processor, or a big bag if you're gonna crush them. We're gonna finely crush these. Once your cookies are finely crushed, we're gonna transfer this to a bowl and add some butter in to bind it together and make it even more rich. Right now we're gonna add a quarter cup or 56 grams of melted butter in, and just kind of drizzle that in, and work it together until you have a wet, crumbly mixture. If you haven't had a mud pie lately and you want a refresher, there is a chocolate crust, there is a brownie layer, there is a chocolate pudding layer on top of that with a whipped cream topping and shaved chocolate. It is a chocolate lover's dream come true, and making it from scratch at home, it's gonna be a thousand times better than anything store-bought. Some people have asked if you need to remove the cream from the Oreos before you process, and no, you don't. That's part of the recipe. It's gonna help bind everything together. Honestly, using your clean hands is the best way to get this worked together. Once your mixture looks like wet sand from a lava beach, you're gonna pop this into your pie dish and shape it up. Now grab a flat-bottomed glass or a measuring cup, and we're going to just make a home for our pie to live in, a home of chocolate cookies. Create a flat well, and then gradually start moving some of the crumbs up to the side of your dish. Once you have the general shape, you can get to pressing. So use your index finger to press the top of the crust down to form that lip. Don't worry if you get some little bald spots at the bottom. We're gonna fix that later. Just concentrate on the side first. By the way, if you like my videos, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I have two new recipes every single week, shorts, and there's always something delicious on the horizon. My crust is all pressed together. Right now it's time to pop it into the oven for 10 minutes, and while that bakes, we're gonna start our brownie layer. In you go. Towards the end of your bake, we're gonna add two ounces of bittersweet chocolate. We wanna give this a nice chop, and we're gonna melt this and make basically a ganache with some butter. You wanna give your chocolate a fine chop so that it melts really quickly. If you had a couple giant pieces hanging out, ugh, you'd be like stirring and stirring and stirring, and you'd be tempted to microwave the chocolate and butter for longer, which would burn the chocolate. So small is the way to go. Okay. That looks pretty nice. I will always say, this recipe is yours. I'm giving you the framework to make it work, but you can always add in flavors you like. You could add a handful of Andes mints and chop those in as well, or a couple drops of peppermint extract for a little chocolate minty situation. To my chocolate, I'm adding a quarter cup or 56 grams of cubed butter. I only cubed it so it would melt faster. We're gonna pop this into a microwave in 30 second bursts, stirring in between for about two minutes in total. This actually melted up in a minute and a half so fast. Now, in a large bowl, I'm gonna add two large room temperature eggs, as well as a third of a cup or 66 grams of granulated sugar. Sprinkle that right in, grab a whisk, and we're gonna mix this up just until it's nice and combined. If you are making actual brownies, not a mud pie, you would do this basically with a hand mixer until it was mixed. You wanna dissolve the sugar completely, and that's how you get that crackly, glossy brownie top. This, however, will be a layer underneath some chocolate pudding, so don't worry about that, just mix it up. Okay, now we're gonna whisk in our warm melted chocolate. The chocolate's not screaming hot, so you don't have to worry about the eggs cooking, but it's always a nice idea just to drizzle and whisk. Anyways, it's a good habit. And as usual, get it all out of the bowl. You wanna eat this delicious stuff, not feed it to your drain. Mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. This looks so good already. Whoa. Now we're gonna whisk in two tablespoons of cocoa powder. It's your choice if you wanna use natural or dutch processed, either is gonna be fine. Mix that in. An eighth of a teaspoon of salt, and a small blessing, or half a teaspoon of vanilla. A little stingy drop. Mix this up. And this is glorious. To hold this together, we need a scant two tablespoons of flour. So sprinkle that in as you whisk. I don't normally scoop flour, but in this case it's fine. So little. Mix it just until the flour disappears. And now it's time to grab our cooled crust and pour this in. It's fine, by the way, if the crust is slightly warm. It does not have to be completely room temperature or cooled, just not screaming hot when you pour this in. Give this a little shimmy, just so it goes to the edges. Give this a big shimmy. This is ready to go into the oven, 350 for about 20 minutes, until it's puffed and set. Don't worry about the puffing, it'll calm down as it cools. In you go. Once your brownie layer is cool, it's time to start this easy, delicious, silky chocolate pudding. Grab three and a half ounces of bittersweet chocolate. I'm gonna cut this into small pieces because it will be melting. And by the way, if you're like, hmm, I like chocolate, all this sounds delicious, but I don't have a lot of time on my hands, even for this easy recipe, just make the chocolate pudding. Put it into cups and you will be astonished by how delicious it is compared to store-bought stuff. Totally different. You want the chocolate in small pieces so it really melts evenly and quickly. Now in a smaller heat-proof bowl, we're gonna add two egg yolks. We do not need the whites for this recipe, so those can get set aside and you can pop them into your omelet tomorrow. And two. Mix these up just to loosen them. Now, in a medium saucepan, we're gonna combine some delicious things, starting with three quarters of a cup or 150 grams of granulated sugar. Two tablespoons of cornstarch along with the egg yolks will give us that silky pudding consistency. And for some contrast, a quarter teaspoon of salt. The salt will really help you taste the chocolate. Whisk this together. Now we're gonna whisk in one and a half cups or 360 mils of whole milk. Just drizzle it in as you whisk. This will prevent clumps and just give you that nice slurry you need to start with. There we go. It's really just the beginning where you kind of need to drizzle and whisk. After the first half goes in, you're golden. Okay. Now we're gonna place this over a medium-high heat, whisking frequently so nothing burns until it's thickened, which will be about five minutes. But everyone's cooktop is different, so make sure that you're very mindful of the actual consistency. I'll show you what it looks like. So once this is on heat, you're gonna see, oh, nothing's happening, nothing's happening. I'm whisking and nothing's happening. And then in a few seconds, it starts to thicken and it's done. So even though it seems like nothing's happening, just keep an eye on it. As you whisk, you're really frothing up the milk, but you'll notice the bubbles change right as it thickens. They become larger and burpier. The change is happening. Come see this. Here, you can see, those are the burpy bubbles we're talking about. With a wooden spoon, you can see it coats the back. Right now, we need to temper that mixture, which means we're gonna add a little bit of hot stuff in there to warm it up, and then we're gonna dump the rest in. So grab half a cup of your thickened milk mixture. So drizzle this in as you whisk. We're doing this because if we just dumped the hot milk in, we might scramble the eggs, which would not be silky, custardy pudding. It would be, hmm, not good. Now we're gonna grab the hot milk mixture and whisk in our warmed egg yolk mixture. Whisk, whisk, whisk, and just drizzle it in. If you've ever made a pastry cream, this seems very familiar to you because it's almost the exact same step. The cornstarch and egg yolks are working together to make that silky texture. Our cornstarch is activated, but now we have to cook the egg yolks over heat. So we're gonna pop this back onto the stove, and basically, you're just whisking constantly for that two to three minutes, making sure that you are hitting the corner of your pan. This is where the burning happens. So you whisk from the center to the outside, and then go back in. That's how it should be. Whoa, wow. Like that. You can see very quickly it starts bubbling up. They're big, burpy bubbles, and it's thickening further. So just with a little bit of whisking, you're done. So let's take it off heat. Now it's time to add in our chocolate. So dump that in, along with two tablespoons of cubed butter. This is basically a chocolate creme patissiere, so, so delicious. We're gonna whisk this together just until everything is melty and amazing. A little bit of butter goes such a long way from taking a custard to ho-hum, to just amazing. It changes the way the flavor.