Christmas Pie

Are you sugared-out yet?:) There is no avoiding desserts this time of year so I say – why fight it? There will be plenty of time to get back into the “healthy eating” routine once the first of January rolls around. In the meantime, I have one more recipe for your festivities.

I came across this recipe last year and boy did it peak my attention. Wanna know why? Well, for one, it uses brandy as one of the ingredients. And second, it also includes white chocolate. I figured that with brandy and chocolate the recipe has to be killer and I was right.

There are some things to remember. In the original recipe, one of the main ingredients is curd, or cottage cheese. Since in the American grocery stores cottage cheese has a bit different texture than in Eastern European markets, the best replacement for that turned out to be ricotta cheese. Also, this year I did not have all the ingredients that were called for so I decided to improvise. Below I include the products that I used and in parentheses you will find the ingredients that I used last year.

Ingredients

400 g cottage cheese from the Eastern European market or ricotta cheese

4 eggs

80 g butter, room temperature

1 can of condensed milk

100 g of white chocolate with peppermint bark (white chocolate with cranberries)

a handful of fresh cranberries (I decided not to use them this year since the chocolate was with peppermint and not cranberries)

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp Amaretto Liqueur (brandy)

1 cup flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

Confectioner’s sugar, to taste

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350F (180 C)
2. Mix butter and condensed milk well, pour in the lemon juice and Amaretto and mix.
3. Beat eggs one at a time and mix
4. Melt the chocolate in a pot on the stove by stirring continuously. Once it becomes liquid, let it sit for a couple of minutes to cool off. Then fold it into the butter mixture.
5. Fold in the cottage cheese into the batter and mix until it is well blended.
6. Mix baking powder with flour, then add to the batter.
7. Don’t forget the cranberries! Now is the time to put them in. (As mentioned earlier, I totally skipped this step this year, but you can experiment)
8. Pour the batter into the bundt pan (if you are using a regular bundt pan, it should be greased; if you are using a silicone one, no need for greasing it).
9. Bake for about an hour.
10. You can check if the pie is ready by sticking a fork inside – it must come out clean.
11. Once it’s fully cooked, flip it onto a serving platter.
12. Optional: Sprinkle with confectioners sugar
13. Allow it to cool at room temperature, then you may place it in the fridge for an hour.
14. Enjoy!

I promise you, first come first serve because there certainly are no leftovers on this one:)

 

What is your favorite dessert?