It was not my day to take the prize last Saturday, at the McCarren Park Greenmarket winter squash pie cookoff.  The laurels went instead to my friend and esteemed colleague Jane Grenier. Her masterful hazelnut-topped butternut-squash adaptation of Epicurious’ Pumpkin Ginger Cheesecake Pie (not to mention her vote-collecting two-pie strategy) won over the crowd of greenmarket shoppers. She won the day’s winter-squash crown and a bagful of market goodies. Congratulations Jane!

My own creation didn’t play nearly so well with the pie-loving crowds. It was a delicata squash custard layered atop chocolate granache.  I dreamed up the recipe one day at work while eating leftover pumpkin pie and a chocolate bar simultaneously. It was good, I thought, and if chocolate and pumpkin can be combined in pumpkin bread, why not in a pie? And while I’m at it, why can’t I use delicious, honey-sweet delicata squash in place of the pumpkin? Hm? Why not?

It turned out that the cookoff crowds had some reasons why not, since so few of them voted for my pie. But even so I felt I was onto a promising recipe, if only because of the gorgeous autumn-sunset-yellow color of the finished pie. It was at least worth another round in the Dave’s Kitchen test lab.

From Jane’s pie I took the idea of adding hazelnuts to the chocolate layer. And to give some bite to the squash custard layer I added orange peel and lemon juice. It may yet be a prize winning pie – I’ll find out this weekend when I enter it into the 1st Annual Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off Benefit at Spacecraft in Williamsburg. Come on out and see if I’ve made a competition-worthy pie after all!

My current version of the recipe for this pie can be found here.

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