Steak and a Clam

Valentine's Day is our anniversary. Our first date was a semi-blind date the weekend prior, and on Valentine's Day Tom sent me a candy heart that said "Hot Lips" in World of Warcraft. We didn't really have an official start date, so February 14th was chosen because it's easy to remember.

Tom is not one for wanting presents. It's like pulling teeth when my family wants to know what to get him for Christmas. So to keep me sane, he gets a dessert and dinner of choice for his birthday, Christmas and our anniversary. As February drew closer, Tom kept replying with "Uuuuuh" and "Iiii don't knoooow" whenever I'd ask him what he wanted. I finally threw my copy of Christina Tosi's cookbook, Milk, at him and told him to pick something.

He picked a pie. Because "Pies are easy." Easy as Pie, right?

Weeellllll.

Another backstory: I made the Dulce De Leche cake for his birthday a couple years ago. Christina's recipes are adapted from her bakery, Milk Bar. Everything makes sense if you're making a million batches. So everything has separate recipes for all the components. The cake had 3 different recipes to make that came together in one towering Voltron of a dessert.

The pie is no different.

Now mind you, each component of a Tosi recipe is easy, and assembly is easy, it's just a lot of plates to spin to bring it all together. And when it's something made for your Love, a little extra work is worth it.

So don't be turned off from the Milk cookbook, I'd say it's intermediate. Just nothing that you'd use at midnight to whip something up for the bake sale in the morning.

The only hitch I found making this recipe was the weather. There was a wind chill of -25F and my apartment isn't the most airtight. The two layers of pie filling are essentially ganaches, and they resolidified in the cold before I was able to get a good swirl with the green and brown.

Still very delicious! The best part is, it freezes nicely so we were able to take our time eating it.