Salted Caramel Pie

This one is a winner!

For Dessert Fest 2012, I was in a salted caramel mood. I wanted to make a pie, and after browsing around a bit, I found this salted caramel pie. Ice cream, check. Cookies, check. Pie? Next up!

This recipe is just three easy steps and really stress-free. And, this was a hit amongst all Dessert Fest guests! There was hardly a morsel left in the pie plate. Yes, a winner indeed.

I made this dessert two days in advance. If you are going to do this too, be sure to refrigerate the pie crust and the filling separately. The only issue I came across is that the caramel was a little too hard to easily spread when I was ready to prepare my pie. I left the caramel on the counter top to come to room temperature, but then got impatient. I boiled some water and put the bowl (with caramel inside) into the boiling water and let it warm up for just a few minutes. I don't know if this is "right" or not, but it seemed to do the trick.

{Graham cracker crust - my favorite!}

{Caramel filling}

Salted Caramel Pie, recipe from Food & Wine

Makes one 9" pie

Special Constraints: This dish is quick to pull together in terms of hands-on labor, but you will need 2 hours to make the caramel filling in the oven, plus at least 4 hours chilling time.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups of graham crackers crumbs (if you buy a box, this will be roughly one of the packages inside) 
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• Two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 tsp. plus a dash of Fleur de Sel, divided
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. To make my graham cracker crumbs, I just placed broken pieces of graham cracker into my food processor and pulsed until it was the right consistency (mine looked kind of like sand). Remove from food processor and measure out 1 1/4 cups. Place this back in the food processor along with the melted butter and light brown sugar and pulse until the mixture is moist. Press the crumbs into a 9" pie plate, into the bottom and up the sides. Bake for about 10 minutes, just until the crust is lightly browned. Remove and cool. Increase the oven temperature to 425 degrees. 

Using a spatula, place the condensed milk into a 13x9 glass baking pan, and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp. fleur de sel. Cover the dish with foil and place in a roasting pan. Add hot water to the roasting pan, enough to come up about half way up the side of the baking pan. Place into the oven and bake, lifting the foil and stirring 2 to the 3 times during the baking process, and adding more water to the roasting pan as necessary. Bake until the condensed milk is golden and thickened, about 2 hours. 

Scrape the filling into the pie crust. Spray a piece of plastic wrap with non-stick cooking spray and cover the pie. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours (I chilled mine over night). 

In a bowl, beat the cream and sugar with an electric mixer until the mixture is firm. Remove the plastic from and top the pie with the whipped cream. Sprinkle fleur de sel on top. Cut into wedges and serve.