Flaky Chocolate Pie Crust

Pie crust is great, but have you ever had chocolate pie crust? This flaky chocolate pie crust is everything you love about pie pastry: tender, flaky and buttery, with the addition of cocoa powder for a deeply chocolate flavor that will complement just about any filling.

The crust comes together just like any other pastry, you can use a pastry blender by hand, or mix with a stand mixer or food processor (though I always recommend mixing in the water by hand regardless). The result is a beautiful, flaky pastry that’s easy to work with and a delight to eat!

My Chocolate Banana Cream Pie recipe (newly updated and improved with new photos and step-by-step!) features a chocolate pastry crust, but the original recipe utilized a rough-puff technique that has since vanished from the internet.

The original crust recipe proportions were a little vague as well, so I made a couple changes and also clarified the process, with step by step photos to show you the way!

So I figured it was high time for an update, and such a delicious crust was more than worthy of its own post, especially since it’s so versatile: you could really fill this chocolate crust with just about anything, from fruit to pumpkin to custard! Let’s be serious, what doesn’t go with chocolate? You could also swap this crust for chocolate cookie crusts if you prefer a flakier pastry (and as much as I love a cookie crust, the demise of the Famous chocolate wafer cookie has me looking for chocolatey alternatives).

The result is a buttery, flaky pastry crust with a rich chocolate flavor. It’s amazing how much chocolate flavor you actually get from a mere 3 tablespoons of cocoa!

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Old-Fashioned Green Tomato Jam with Lime & Cinnamon

Talk about a unique jam: made from unripe green tomatoes and flavored with lime and a hint of cinnamon, this Green Tomato Jam is a true old fashioned jam, meaning it achieves its jammy consistency with just sugar and time—no added pectin needed.

It may look like pickle relish, but this green tomato jam is a wonderfully bright and flavorful jam that toes the line between sweet and savory. Paired with a hint of cinnamon and a punch of tangy lime, it’s the perfect condiment for late-summer savoring and year-round snacking. Use it like you would applesauce or pepper jelly!

(Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of the post to download the free printable labels!)

Our trip to Iceland this past spring (which I’m still planning to write about, I promise! I just need to find a few spare hours to edit the slew of photos still sitting on my camera card) was mostly centered around the natural beauty, and less so much about food (which is our normal mode of travel—following our stomachs, if you will, so this trip was quite a departure for us).

That said, we still managed to have a few particularly memorable meals, including a coveted lunch reservation at the tomato mecca known as Friðheimar. The restaurant itself, located just off the Golden Circle route, sits inside the main greenhouse, with tables nestled amongst the rows of towering tomato plants and golden glowing grow lights that warm the space from the inside out, with entire rooms full of nothing but basil nearby. It’s a magical place that’s always warm and bright, even on dark and rainy days. I highly recommend making a reservation if you’re planning to go to Iceland anytime soon.

They are famous for their tomato soup (served all-you-can-eat style with an abundance of homemade bread), but we found the dessert to be the most memorable dish of the meal: a frosty, chilled mini terracotta flower pot filled with tomato-flavored ice cream, and topped with a layer of two-toned tomato jam in red and green.

I regret not buying a jar of the green tomato jam to bring home with me (but you know, carry on bags and all that). I have a hunch that, based on the texture of it, Friðheimar’s version might use tomatoes that are green in color when they are completely ripe (like green zebra), but I wanted to try my hand at making a jam with unripe tomatoes which seemed like a much more versatile and practical recipe. You know, for that stressful stretch of days before the first frost hits when you have no choice but to pluck the last of the tomatoes from your garden, ripe or not.

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Crispy Oven-Roasted Okra

Crispy, crunchy, and not in the least bit slimy, our easy oven-roasted okra recipe will quickly become your new favorite way to cook this often overlooked and underestimated vegetable.

With a few simple techniques, you can achieve crunchy perfection in your very own oven (no deep frier, air fryer, or finicky batter/breading necessary). Seasoned with olive oil, soy sauce, and togarashi for a flavor-packed and umami rich side dish that’s—dare I say—even more satisfying than French fries.

Okra often gets a bad rap, often stereotyped as slimy and unappetizing.

But perhaps… you’ve just been cooking it wrong.

Roasting the okra high and dry reduces any lingering sliminess (one of the main factors in a person’s dislike of okra, I’ve found). The result is delightfully crispy, and nearly as satisfying as a deep-fried French fry with a fraction of the oil.

While I almost always line my baking pans with parchment, in the case of this recipe, the parchment actually impedes the browning process (not to mention you’re not technically supposed to put parchment in high heat environments, so keep it for the cookies, ok?) Instead, an unlined, light colored aluminum sheet pan produces the crispiest results.

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