Chocolate + Raspberries = A Summer Pie

Because I hosted company for dinner twice last week, that meant I got to bake two pies. :-) The second that I chose from the Martha Stewart summer pie series in the June issue of the magazine was Chocolate Raspberry Pie, after baking the Peach Custard Pie earlier in the week.

Again, I baked my tried-and-true Flaky Pastry pie crust, instead of the chocolate mixture they had... the chocolate would have been more adventurous, but it was already getting late in the evening, and it wanted to be chilled for an hour, so I decided to stick with the basic recipe.

Here it is, ready and waiting for the next step. There's something very promising about an empty pie crust - like a blank canvas waiting to be filled in with any number of possibilities. :-)

I first filled mine with a melted chocolate mixture. The recipe called for bittersweet chocolate, and I used unsweetened baking chocolate, which ended up probably more bitter than it should have, but, when combined with the raspberries and ice cream, it actually was a nice combination to not have sweet chocolate.

It was at this point that I put it in the refrigerator to chill and went to bed, to be continued the next morning.

This random sweet puppy face showed up on my camera in the midst of the pie photos... It must have been the doing of Scott the next morning, before I came upstairs.

So the morning's first task was to make the raspberry syrup, by crushing a few of the raspberries and combining with some sugar, cornstarch and water.

This is how it looked after simmering a few minutes.

Then I tossed the rest of the fresh raspberries with the syrup.

And added them to the pie crust atop the chocolate filling. We enjoyed it with vanilla ice cream that evening with Emily and Morgan, after a trip out to see the mares and foals, and it was very tasty and the recipe was approved by all.