Pie Ball

For Thanksgiving this year, Jeremy and I went to his mom's house to help with Thanksgiving dinner. Each time it's a careful negotiation between the meat eaters (everyone but us) and the vegetarians (us). At his mom's, we normally have lasagna (meat and veggie), a few sides, and dessert.
We recently bought a used copy of The Essence of Chocolate by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg. After drooling over its pages for months now, we finally settled on the Chocolate Pecan Pie for our Thanksgiving contribution.
I woke up early Thanksgiving morning to work on the crust, which needed to sit in the frig for three hours. At Jeremy's mom's we made the filling and baked the pie. As Jeremy removed it, the pie slipped off the cookie sheet and smashed on the floor. He ran out of the kitchen in horror, while I tried to scoop the napalm hot chunks off the floor, trying to pick out any kibble or dog hair. (I was trying to meet that five-second rule of removing dropped food from the floor.) I salvaged as much as I can and, knowing we couldnt serve it to anyone else, we started another version. The former pie sat in the bowl, and we munched on it during the day.
Since there was no time for the original crust, I used the Betty Crocker recipe with a few additions, and Jeremy remade the filling. It turned out well--rich and chocolately (god I love that cookbook), and everyone raved about its flavor.
At the end of the night, I separated the pie in the bowl into 2 sections of saran wrap--one for Jeremy's mom and one for us. Because of the corn syrup, I could squish the remnants into a dense ball, crust intermingling with chocolate and pecans.
The next day, I cut off a slice. When I bit into the pieball, I nearly fell over. It was soooooo good!!! Better than the regular pie! The way that all of the tastes mixed together, the way that the corn syrup had become almost like caramel. My god, pie ball was like heaven on a plate. I'm convinced we should do this every time we make a pecan-based pie. We should collapse it onto a cookie sheet and squish it into a ball.

Crust:
4 T unsalted butter at room temperature
3 oz. cream cheese at room temperature
pinch of salt
1 t cinnamon
2 T sugar
1/2 cu flour
Filling:
1 1/2 c toasted pecans, whole or chopped
4 oz. 70% bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 T unsalted butter
5 oz. 70% bittersweet chocolate, coarsley chopped
1/4 c packed brown sugar
1 c light corn syrup
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 t pure vanilla extract
In a stand mixer with a paddle, cream butter and cream cheese. Add salt, cinnamon and sugar and beat until uniform in color. Add flour and mix just until combined.
Turn the dough out and shape into a 6 inch disk on plastic wrap. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, about 2 hours.
On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into 12 inch circle and place in a 9 inch pie pan. Trim edges and refrigerate 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 1 hour and place rack on the lowest shelf.
Place pie plate on a baking sheet (we found this more trouble than it was worth--a deep dish will not overflow). Sprinkle the pecans and 4 oz. chocolate over the bottom of the piecrust.
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and 5 oz chocolate over low heat. When smooth, remove from heat and stir in brown sugar, corn syrup, eggs and vanilla. Pour over pecans and chocolate.
Bake 45 to 50 minutes (ours took a bit longer) or until golden brown and the center of the pie is set. Cool completely before cutting.