Crispy ruffled milk pie, with a layer of sweet black sesame chocolate on the bottom. A beautiful looking dessert that's super easy to make and great to bring along to gatherings!
I'm not much of a baker, but this dessert is so easy that I hardly call it baking. 🙂 The steps are simple, make crispy phyllo bundles with store-bought phyllo sheets and fill it with a sweet black sesame chocolate filling and continue to bake until it is done. Pretty simple right?
Ruffled milk pie is one of those desserts that you can bring to a party or a gathering because it's super easy to make and looks absolutely beautiful.
INGREDIENTS
For this black sesame chocolate ruffled milk pie recipe, you can find all ingredients at a local grocery store. If you cannot find black sesame seeds at your local grocery store, you can find it at an Asian grocery store or you can substitute it with white sesame seeds.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Cover Phyllo to Prevent It From Drying Out
Since phyllo pastry sheets are paper-thin, it is very easy for it to dry out when we are working with it. Brittle phyllo pastry breaks a lot more easily so it is hard to shape it or brush butter on it without it tearing into tiny small pieces. To prevent this, take a damp towel or paper towel and cover the sheets that are not currently being worked on and work on one phyllo sheet at a time. Make sure the towel is damp and not wet - if the towels are wet, the phyllo pastry will absorb the water and turn mushy which will make it hard to work with as well because it will meld the sheets together.
Making Ruffled Bundles
Making phyllo bundles are super easy, and it's okay if they are not perfect, they will still look fantastic.
To start off, lay 1 sheet of phyllo pastry on the counter and brush it liberally with melted butter. Then lay another sheet on top and brush that sheet with melted butter as well. I like to use 2 sheets per bundle to give each bundle a bit more substance. You can use less (1) or more (3) if you like.
Once all the phyllo sheets have been buttered, gently grab the sheets on each end and ruffle it - it doesn't have to be perfect but try not to pinch it too hard. The looser the ruffles, the crispier it will be.
Once the sheets have been loosely ruffled, coil it in a spiral gently - try not to coil it too tight for maximum crispiness! To make the bundles crispier, I like to gently tuck the end underneath the bottom of the bundle to give it a bit of height so that when I pour the chocolate filling in the pan, I have a lot more phyllo sitting higher up for more crispiness. I also like to gently pinch the middle up higher as well once the coil is complete since I noticed that the middle tends to sag down.
Mix all Filling Ingredients Together
Whenever you work with eggs in a custardy dessert, you usually want to temper it. Tempering means you boil a liquid first (usually the milk) and gently pour it into the beaten egg slowly while mixing vigorously. When you put an egg directly into something very hot, especially over a stove it will get clumpy and become scrambled eggs.
For this recipe, I didn't want to dirty that many dishes so I stream-lined it so you don't need to worry about tempering the eggs. There are not many eggs in this recipe anyway, so you can easily mix everything together and pour it directly into the pan and cook it in the oven - perfect!
The only extra step you need to do, is to separately mix the glutinous rice flour with the water before you add it into the chocolate mixture. Glutinous rice flour can get clumpy so I mix it separately with a bit up milk until it is smooth and has dissolved fully into the milk before adding it into the mixture.
Leave Room for Filling
Whenever I made ruffled milk pie, I always poured the filling over the phyllo pastry because traditionally, that's what you're supposed to do but I was never happy with the result because it never gave me crispy phyllo pastry and the final product was always missing that crispiness. I started to experiment with leaving a gap somewhere in the pan and pouring the filling in the gaps and gently lifting the bundles so that the filling goes under each bundle before setting the bundles back down on the filling. By not pouring the filling on top of the phyllo, it left the tops drier for a crispier texture.
To make clean up easier, use parchment on the bottom of the pan 🙂
Black Sesame Chocolate Ruffle Milk Pie
INGREDIENTS
- 10 sheets phyllo pastry
- ½ cup butter
Black Sesame Chocolate Filling
- 1 egg
- 1 cup sweetened condensed milk
- ¼ cup sugar
- ½ cup milk
- ⅓ cup cocoa powder
- ⅓ cup black sesame seeds (can substitute for white sesame seeds)
- 1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Glutinous Rice Flour Slurry
- 2 ½ tablespoon glutinous rice flour (you can substitute with potato or corn starch, but the texture will be different)
- 3 tablespoons milk
Garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
Making Ruffled Phyllo Bundles
- Cut the butter into 1-inch chunks and melt it over the stovetop or in a microwave. (If you use a microwave, make sure you heat it at 10 seconds intervals and check on it before adding another 10 seconds else it will splatter everywhere and it'll get messy 🙂 ). Set the melted butter aside.
- Use a 9-inch pan and butter it or line it with parchment paper. It's important that you use a pan that is 9-inches or larger with a height of at least 2 inches so that the chocolate filling doesn't overflow or get too high - which will reduce the amount of crispy phyllo exposed by half.Â
- Get a large kitchen towel or some paper towel and wet it. Wring it out really well so that it is just damp. Remove the phyllo pastry from the packaging and place it closeby on the counter, folded in half and cover it with the damp towel.
- Take 1 sheet of phyllo pastry and brush it liberally with melted butter. Take another sheet of phyllo pastry and lay it on top of the buttered one and brush melted butter on it liberally as well.
- Gently pinch the pastry into ruffled folds on the 2 ends and the middle.
- Gently spiral it into a coil and tuck the end underneath the bottom so that the bundles sit higher (this is to expose more of the phyllo pastry during baking for more crispiness!) I like to also gently pull up the middle of the coil as well to make it sit slightly higher.
- Set the bundle in the pan.
- Continue steps 4-7 until you have 5 bundles in the pan. Make sure to leave a small space where you can cleanly pour the chocolate filling in without getting it on top of the ruffled bundles.
- Use the remainder of the butter and brush the tops of each phyllo bundle until there is a light layer of butter on it. You may need to heat up some more butter if there is not enough.
- Pre-heat the oven to 350F (180C).
- Put it in the oven and bake it for 25-30 minutes until it is slightly golden and crispy at the tops.
- Remove it from the oven and let it slightly cool while you make the Black Sesame Chocolate Filling. (Leave the oven on, we will still need to use it.)
Mixing the Black Sesame Chocolate Filling
- In a food processor, blitz the sesame seeds until it is fine like sand.
- In a large bowl combine everything under the 'Black Sesame Chocolate Filling' ingredient section and mix well.
- In a separate small bowl, combine the glutinous rice flour and milk and mix until it has dissolved into the milk and it is smooth.
- Add the glutinous rice flour slurry you just made to the Chocolate Filling and mix everything well.
Putting It Together
- Gently pour ½ the chocolate filling into the pan with the phyllo bundles in the area where you left a little space. (In my example, I left it in the middle.) Being careful not to get any on top of the phyllo pastry bundles.
- Gently lift each bundle ½ inch up one at a time and tilt the pan to get the chocolate filling underneath each bundle to evenly get the chocolate filling throughout the dessert. (If the pan is still hot, make sure to use oven mitts so you don't burn yourself when you are tilting the pan! 🙂 )
- Pour in the remainder of the filling through the openings and put the pan back in the oven
- Bake for an additional 25-30 minutes until the phyllo is golden brown and the chocolate filling doesn't jiggle when you gently wiggle it.
- Lightly drizzle with some condensed milk or dust with powdered sugar on top and serve fresh while it is crispy.
NOTES
- If you are using frozen phyllo pastry, you may need to defrost it in the fridge overnight or defrost it in room temperature for about 3-4 hours. Keep the phyllo pastry in its original packaging while it's defrosting so it doesn't dry out.
- This dessert is lightly sweetened. If you prefer a sweeter dessert, add an additional 2-3 tablespoons of sugar.
- If you have a small blender or food processor, you can make your own powdered sugar by blitzing regular sugar! 🙂
- If you have leftovers, you can reheat this in the oven at 350F for about 10 minutes to make the phyllo pastry crispy again
- Leftovers can be stored in a well-sealed container in the fridge. Make sure it has fully cooled before putting it into the container.
- This recipe is inspired and loosely adapted from Ful-Filled - Pumpkin Spice Ruffled Milk Pie
NUTRITION
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bella says
Ooooh! I am so inspired by your creativity here! These flavors sound so delicious together & I am super honored to have inspired you to make this recipe 🙂
Joyce Lee says
Hi Bella,
Aw thanks so much for your kind words! All your recipes always look so amazing and make me drool!! I feel honored to have you here! 🙂
heather (delicious not gorgeous) says
what is this and how come i've never heard of it?! this looks so unique + i've been obsessed with black sesame recently (i made a black sesame latte recipe 4+ times over the past 3 weeks...)
Joyce says
Whoa black sesame latte!? sounds amazing where's mine? 😀 Sadly whenever I think of sweet stuff, I always default to chocolate or black sesame haha or anything with condensed milk on it! 😀
Makos says
After seeing this black sesame-chocolate pie you're officially my favorite person! I just can't wait to try this recipe!
Joyce says
haha you're too funny Makos! 🙂 Wait I thought I was always your favorite person? haha I kid! 🙂
Phil says
How hot is the oven?
Joyce says
Hi Phil!
Good catch! I must have been dozing when I was writing this haha 🙂 Pre-heat the oven to 350F. I updated the recipe card with it on step 10 under 'Making the Ruffled Phyllo Bundles'