Brown Butter Chocolate Cream Pie

Creamy, smooth nearly ganache like in consistency, brown butter chocolate cream pie.

Servings 9" pie

Ingredients

Brown Butter Chocolate Custard

113 g or ½ cup unsalted butter cold is fine
180g or ¾ cup whole milk
100 g or ½ cup brown sugar light or dark
4 egg yolks from four large eggs, reserve whites for another use
300 g semi-sweet or dark chocolate if you like it more sweet, use semi-sweet, if you like dark chocolate use that
¼ tsp fine sea salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
80g or ⅓ cup full fat sour cream
2 tablespoons whole milk

Whipped Cream

1-2 cups heavy whipping cream depending on how much whipped cream you want
2-4 tablespoons brown or granulated sugar
Pinch fine sea salt
1 tsp pure vanilla extract or paste
2 tablespoons dutch process cocoa, per cup whipped cream optional, if you want to make it a chocolate whipped cream

Instructions

Fully blind bake a pie crust.
Chop the chocolate finely and set in a bowl with a sieve over the bowl.
In a light colored pot, brown the butter: cook as it melts, then sputters and foams. Once you see the bits at the bottom of the pot have turned a toasty brown color and smell fragrantly nutty, pour in the milk first and whisk (this will cool the butter down) then the salt, sugar and egg yolks. Whisk well and cook the custard on medium low heat until the custard thickens slightly and the temperature registers about 160F.
Pour the custard through the fine mesh sieve over the chocolate. Give it a gentle stir then leave it for 20 seconds. Add the vanilla and stir until all the chocolate has melted.
It will look like it has started to separate, add the sour cream and then the milk, stirring vigorously as you pour it in. The custard will come together in a thick and shiny ganache like texture but have little bits (those are from the brown butter!). Pour it into the pie shell and chill for at least 4 hours.

For the whipped cream

Place all the ingredients in a food processor and process on high for 1-3 minutes, until thick. Spread over the custard.

Video

Notes

This recipe was updated in November 2024: the milk quantity has been reduced by a quarter of a cup to help with issues readers had with the filling splitting/setting - it is slightly thicker now. The instructions now give a simpler preparation method, doing without the egg tempering process and I now ask you to pour the custard through a sieve to remove any egg bits.