The dilemna when making a Chocolate Pie is what type of crust to use. Sometimes I use a graham cracker crumb crust but my favorite is this buttery crisp Shortbread Crust that makes enough pastry for either an 8 or 9 inch (20 to 23 cm) pie or tart. This Shortbread Crust is easily made in your food processor. Make sure to have the butter cold from the refrigerator and cut it into small pieces so it blends easily into the flour. Pulse the ingredients just until the pastry starts to clump together, but is not a solid ball. Then transfer the pastry to your pan and spread it evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan. This can be done with your fingers or the back of a spoon. The bottom of the pastry is then pricked to prevent puffing up during baking. Common practice is to line and fill the unbaked pastry crust with pie weights or rice before baking to prevent the pastry from shrinking and puffing up. But you can eliminate this step by putting the unbaked shortbread crust in the freezer for 15 minutes. This sets the crust which prevents these problems. Once the crust is baked until golden brown let it cool completely before filling with the chilled chocolate filling. If you like, you can make the crust a few days in advance. Just cover and store at room temperature.

The chocolate filling uses both unsweetened cocoa powder and semisweet chocolate, which gives it a deep chocolate flavor. It is really a pudding, which is like making a 'cooked' custard with a little cornstarch (corn flour) added to make it nice and thick. The danger zone is cooking it over too high a heat causing lumps or even worse, scorching. To avoid these pitfalls use a heavy bottomed saucepan and cook it over medium low heat, stirring constantly with a large heatproof rubber spatula. Make sure when stirring you reach the bottom, sides and corners of the saucepan to prevent the filling from sticking and scorching. As you cook the filling it may look lumpy but if you stir quickly the lumps should smooth out. Once the filling has become thick, like mayonnaise, remove immediately from the heat. Straining the filling will help get rid of any lumps that may have formed. Once you have added the chopped chocolate, vanilla and butter avoid over mixing the ingredients as the filling is quite fragile at this stage. The filling does need to be cooled and then chilled in the refrigerator until quite thick (at least four hours, or even overnight).