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Recipe: Coffee Mud Pie with an Oreo Crust excerpted from THE PIE ACADEMY cookbook

Here’s a classic ice cream pie with layers of coffee ice cream sandwiching a layer of Oreo cookies and chocolate ganache, all in an Oreo crust. I’d have a hard time choosing an ice cream pie I like more. As with other ice cream pies, the key to doing this right is paying close attention to the texture of the ice cream. It needs to be softish and workable, but not starting to melt.

Makes 10 servings

Oreo Crumb Crust

One 9- to 91/2-inch standard or deep-dish pie shell

3 cups coarsely crumbled Oreo cookies

2–3 tablespoons sugar

Scant ¼ teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1. Combine the cookies, sugar to taste, and salt in a food processor. Pulse the machine repeatedly to make fine crumbs. Transfer to a large bowl.

2. Pour the butter over the crumbs. Mix well with a fork, then use your fingers to rub the mixture together thoroughly. If you press some of the mixture between your fingers, it should hold together without immediately crumbling apart. (The cookie filling gives it extra holding power.)

3. Transfer the crumbs to the pie pan and spread them around loosely in the pan and up the sides. When they’re evenly distributed, start pressing them into place. Drape a piece of plastic wrap over the crust for the final pressing. (This will help you do a cleaner job of getting the shell even.) Refrigerate the pie shell for about 10 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) while the shell chills. Bake the pie shell on the center oven rack for 8 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool thoroughly.

Filling

½ gallon coffee ice cream

2 cups coarsely broken Oreo cookies (12 or 13 cookies)

Chocolate Ganache at room temperature or slightly warm

*Excerpted with permission from Pie Academy by Ken Haedrich, test © 2020 Ken Haedrich, Published by Storey Publishing, Photography by © Emulsion Studio.*

Directions

1. Prepare the crust and press it into the bottom and up the sides of a 91/2-inch standard pie pan. Refrigerate, prebake, and cool as directed. Refrigerate the shell until needed.

2. If the ice cream is very hard, put it in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes before you plan to assemble the pie, to soften it up. Spoon half of the ice cream into the pie shell with an ice cream spade. With the back of the spade, press the ice cream firmly and evenly into the shell. Place in the freezer for 10 minutes, and return the remaining ice cream to the freezer, too.

3. Remove the pie from the freezer and spread the broken Oreo cookies over the ice cream, gently pressing them in. Spoon or pour a generous layer of the chocolate ganache over the cookies. Place in the freezer again for 10 minutes.

4. Spread the remaining ice cream over the cookies and sauce. Using the back of the ice cream spade, smooth the ice cream into a nicely rounded mound. (It helps to run the utensil under hot water briefly as you do this.) Drizzle as much of the remaining sauce as you like over the surface. Cover with loosely tented aluminum foil and freeze for at least 1 hour or overnight before serving.

Recipe for Success

When you scoop out the first half of the ice cream, take it from around the edges, where it is the softest.

Make sure the chocolate ganache isn’t too warm when you pour it over the ice cream, or the ice cream will start to melt.

It may seem like extra work to put the pie in the freezer twice, but it helps prevent the ice cream from squishing up and out the sides as you add each layer.