happy valentine's day / smlove pie!

happy v-day to everyone out there - whether it means celebrating love, vagina monologue performances, or birthdays (like my cousin isaac and my friend matt!). my valentine and i celebrated yesterday evening, and my gift was chocolate, because everyone should celebrate chocolate.

which we did. with the magnificent 'smlove pie' from veganomicon, and which the lovely authors have kindly decided to post about on their website. check it out: its a doozy. i wanted something really decadent that i knew would be appreciated, and i was also curious to finally try out a fancy vegan dessert. there are about 20 other blogger who have boldly gone where i did before, so i figured it would turn out well. and it did.

thank god.

because it took hours.

**

it starts with some graham crackers, which you see before you hanging out in the magical food processor. they look so innocent.

look - a few seconds later - crumbs!

and all you have to do is add a little oil and its pie crust!

the main filling begins with this:

now, i know what you are thinking. you are thinking, "this is disgusting. there is no way this will work. you are crazy, shayna punim." i understand this, because i was thinking it too. i looked at the following scene and tasted a bit of the tofu stuck to the container and almost gave up.

but then i reconsidered, in part because of one of the ingredients in the above picture:

seriously, nothing with kahlua can be bad. plus you can drink some and pretend you are The Dude. there's a beverage here, MAN.

but i digress.

the following ingredient also made me reconsider giving up. note the fancy improv double boiler.

and, really, this doesn't look so bad.

i may have tasted this. and my impression may have been that it was a delicious chocolate pudding.

here is the delicious chocolate pudding in the pie shell, about to be baked for 40 minutes.

and...here it is coming out of the oven. almost unrecognizable.

we now say goodbye to the pie as it chills for three hours. in the meantime, we make maple candied pecans by toasting the pecans with maple syrup and a touch of oil and salt:

then they chill, because they are too sticky right now. also, they burn your tongue at this stage. not that such a thing occurred to me.

let us now move on to the peanut butter caramel sauce. it involves peanut butter, maple syrup, and a few tablespoons from this almost-eight-dolla jar right here:

its natural. and slightly caramel-y.

assembly time! i do believe this is looking good...

one might even use the word 'professional.'

all it needs now is some ganache.

we don't need no stinkin'-pastry-bag-because-ours-is-in-storage for application, because we have...ms. plastic bag with a tip cut off!

oh yes. come to mama.

money shot!

they say happiness is a warm gun, and it is. but its also the last bite of a slice of this pie. that is all.