Grasshopper pie

 

Frozen Grasshopper Pie

     I had never heard of Grasshopper pie, until I had it during Thanksgiving 2016 at Scott's cousin's house (thanks, Edie and Becky!).  Grasshopper pie is a delicious chocolate mint frozen pie (named after the popular grasshopper drink and grasshopper cookies).  I quite enjoyed it (I'm a sucker for chocolate mint food combinations!), so I asked for the recipe.  I decided to make it (along with a pecan pie) for Christmas this year to share with my housemates.  Boy, am I glad I did!

Frozen Grasshopper pie 

Ingredients:

2/3 cup milk

24 larger marshmallows

4 tbsp. creme de menthe (green)

2 tbsp. creme de cacao (white)

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 chocolate pie crust

Procedure:

1) Prepare the chocolate pie crust.  The author says she bought the Oreo brand in the section with graham cracker crusts.  "I always finish with egg white and bake for 5 minutes or so on 350.  Then, let the crust cool down."

2) Heat milk and marshmallows and stir until thoroughly melted (about 10 minutes).  Remove from heat and left cool about 15 minutes.  Then, pour into large mixing bowl.

3) Add Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cacao to the marshmallow mixture.  Stir well.

4) Whip the whipping cream until firm ("you will need your mixer for this").  Fold this in with everything else and stir a few times.

5) Pour this in to the crust and freeze overnight.  Garnish with chocolate shavings, chips, or sauce.

Our abundance of pies during Christmas.  From left to right: pecan pie, grasshopper pie, and apple pie à la mode 

  A few substitutions.  Wanting to avoid going to a lot of stores, I used what I had at home.  Instead of green creme de menthe, I used Peppermint Schnapps and green food coloring.  I used a chocolate-colored Cocoa creme we already had at home.  I also decided be slightly lazy and purchased a pre-made Oreo crust.  I followed the pre-baking advice as suggested.  For my garnish, I used mint oreo cookies and broken up Andes mints.  
  Overall, the pie came out very good and refreshing, although the peppermint taste was almost a little too strong.  I think next time I will just go out and buy creme de menthe to see if that will give it a smoother minty taste.  The only unfortunate thing about making the Grasshopper pie is that I made an excellent pecan pie, so it did not have a starring role during the Christmas feast.  Ah well, an abundance of delicious pies is the kind of problem I like to have!