Crustless Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

It was a very quiet Thanksgiving this year, and the thing I found myself most thankful for was the understanding of my loved ones when I said what I wanted more than anything this year was to decline all of their invitations and just stay home. It’s been that sort of month.

I made a relatively small dinner, with one token green vegetable and far too many potatoes. I wanted dessert, but I didn’t want pie. Actually, let me clarify; if someone had shown up on my doorstep with pie, “OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE WITH THAT GET AWAY FROM ME NOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” would serve as a fine example of the exact opposite of my reaction. I wanted pie just fine. What I didn’t want was to make pie.

But I had a can of pumpkin. I had chocolate. I had a firm belief that with a bit of ingenuity, I could get very close to the best of all possible worlds; an apartment that smelled like pie baking, something very like pie for dessert, and almost no effort on my part required.

And, as it turns out, I was right.

CRUSTLESS CHOCOLATE PUMPKIN PIE

1 15 oz can pumpkin

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400.

In a medium bowl, whisk pumpkin and eggs together until smooth. Resist urge to taste this mixture, it looks fantastic but is not all it smells to be.

Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Now you can taste it.

Add flour, cinnamon and cloves, stir until blended.

Add chocolate chips. I used 1 1/2 cups and had a very chocolaty pie. This is not a bad thing. But if you prefer the pumpkin to be a more dominant presence in this dessert, reduce chocolate to 1 cup.

Pour mixture into a glass pie dish, and bake for 45 minutes. Allow to cool for about an hour, until firm. Serve with whipped cream. Lots and lots of whipped cream. Like a 1:1 ratio of pie to whipped cream. And some fresh mint, if you like to pretend there’s something in your dessert that isn’t just sitting on the plate waiting to kill you.

 
 
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