Delicious Chocolate Pudding Pie

You’d never guess it’s vegan.

The thirteenth series of the Great British Baking Show is currently running on Netflix, with a new episode added every Friday. Actually, in Britain it’s called the Great British Bake Off, but the Pillsbury Company owns a trademark for “Bake-Off”,  and the show had to be renamed for release in the United States and Canada. The ten weekly episodes start with twelve amateur bakers who have to demonstrate their skills by completing three different challenges each episode. Two judges will choose the best – the “Star Baker” – and the worst contestant who will be eliminated (won’t come back). Three bakers are left in the final episode when one of them is chosen as the series’ winner.

Although I enjoy watching the show, I hardly ever feel tempted to try one of their bakes which often are visually stunning, but… Milk, eggs, butter, cream, etc. are almost always the basic ingredients. Often they add gelatin, lard, even suet; and savory bakes can include just about any part of various animals. Neither do I like spending lots of hours preparing different doughs, glazes, stuffings, frostings, and decorations, unless there is a very special occasion. 

So here is an embarrassingly simple treat that doesn’t take much more than 20 minutes to prepare and is all vegan. 

Ingredients:

• 1 prepared pie crust 

• ⅓ cup organic sugar

• ⅓ cup cocoa powder

• 3 TS cornstarch

• ¼ ts salt

• Dash of cayenne pepper

• 2 ¼ cup soy or other plant-based milk

• 1TS coconut oil

• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

• Vegan cool-whip for decoration (optional)

Preparation:

Heat the oven to 350F and bake the crust for 10 minutes, let cool.

In a medium-sized saucepan, whisk all the dry ingredients together. Add the milk and whisk until there are no little lumps. Turn on the heat to medium, whisk constantly until the mixture starts to boil. Turn heat to low and keep cooking for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the coconut oil, stir until melted, then add the chocolate chips. Turn the heat off while the chocolate chips melt, keep stirring.

Pour into the crust. Cover with a piece of seran wrap to prevent a skin from forming, try to avoid air bubbles. Let it cool a bit and then move to the refrigerator and let set for at least three hours.

If you have a piping bag, fill it with some vegan cool-whip and pipe some rosettes around the edges of your pie. I don’t have one, so I just used a plastic bag, cut one corner off, and squeezed some dollops out. 

It’s easy, fast, and tastes good!