Chocolate French Silk Pie (No Raw Eggs!)

Smooth, rich, and absolutely elegant, this Chocolate French Silk Pie is a must-make for all the chocolate lovers. Made without any raw eggs, this pie features a homemade shortbread cookie crust with a chocolate mousse filling and an indulgent tangy whipped cream top.

One bite of this luxurious deep chocolate pie and you'll understand where the name comes from. Whether you call it French Silk or Chocolate Silk Pie, it's clear that the ethereal chocolate mousse filling is the reason for its silky namesake.

This pie and I have a special relationship. It was one of the very first pies I ever made while working in a restaurant kitchen (this and a version of Bourbon Pecan Pie) and it helped spark my love of making pies all those years ago. I remember being tasked with making it and how foreign it sounded to me. I had never eaten a Chocolate Silk Pie, and in fact, I had never even seen one.

Traditionally, the pie is made by combining melting chocolate with whipped sugar, butter, and raw eggs. It's finished off with some folded-in whipped cream.

I recall reading through the instructions and being confused about the raw eggs. Was a step missing? Shouldn't they be cooked?

To be sure, the pie was delicious. But I didn't feel right about adding raw eggs in then, and all these years later I still don't. I guess you could say that was my first instinct to tinker with recipes to make them my own. However, it was many, many years until I felt brave enough to start to "develop" recipes (this Chocolate Pudding was one of the firsts).

Fast forward over a decade, and here is my own version of that classic Chocolate Silk Pie. Still true to the traditional taste, but made my way, with cooked eggs, a perfect shortbread crust, and the most amazing tangy whipped cream.

So, let's get to making it, shall we? The article below details all the information you need to know to make these successfully, concluding with the recipe at the end. You can jump around using the menu below, or skip to the end of the article for the full recipe.

Jump to:

• Ingredients Needed
• Let's Talk Chocolate
• Why Mise en Place Matters for this Recipe
• Making the Shortbread Pie Crust
• How to Make the Chocolate Filling
• Visual Overview of Steps to Make French Silk Filling
• The Special Whipped Cream that Brings it All Together
• How to Serve It
• More Chocolate Recipes
• Full Recipe

Let's Talk Chocolate

This recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate, which means it contains about 70% cacao. The amount of sugar added to the recipe is balanced with the bittersweet chocolate. It results in a deeply chocolatey flavor.

It is possible to use semisweet chocolate if that is all that is available. The pie will be a little sweeter, but still good.

The recipe calls for chopped chocolate, as opposed to chocolate chips. Bar chocolate is far superior to use in baking recipes because it has no additives like chocolate chips.

Can you use chocolate chips for this in a pinch? Possibly. I haven't tried. But I really recommend sticking with baking chocolate if possible.

Why Mise en Place Matters for this Recipe

The recipes on this site vary greatly in difficulty. Some are very simple (like this No Bake Oreo Pie), and others have multiple steps that are more difficult (like this Mascarpone Roasted Plum Pie). This French Silk Pie falls somewhere in between and takes some skill and finesse to make it. However, it's totally doable, and my best advice for making it is to read the recipe thoroughly before beginning and have everything ready to go before making it. AKA get your mise en place ready! Once you start making the chocolate filling you can't stop, so please follow this advice.

Making the Shortbread Pie Crust

An elegant pie deserves an equally elegant pie crust. Enter the buttery shortbread crust that bakes up both pretty and delicious.

It also comes together quickly in a food processor following the usual way to make a "short" pie crust:

1. Add the dry ingredients
2. Pulse in the butter
3. Add the wet ingredients--in this case, egg--and pulse until it just comes together around the blade, and then stop!

The consistency will be that of play dough when it's done. It will be soft, but if handled delicately it can be rolled out right away. Or, it can be made ahead of time for up to 3 days.

I like using a shortbread crust for a pie filling that needs refrigeration because it is sturdy, yet also still light-tasting when cold.

If you don't want to make a pie crust, a quick Oreo Cookie Pie Crust would be really awesome with this pie. It's delicious when paired with the silky chocolate filling and can be a no-bake easy option for making this pie.

I would not suggest using a flaky pie crust for this pie, since it will be served cold. But if you really want to, you can use this Butter Pie Crust recipe.

The pie crust will need to be blind baked completely, since this filling is made completely on the stove. Check out this Guide to Blind Baking if this is new to you.

How to Make the Chocolate Filling

Essentially, the chocolate filling is a mousse. A mousse can be made in several different ways, but usually, it's made with some type of whipped raw eggs. As stated above, a classic French Silk Pie uses raw whole eggs that are whipped into a sweet buttery chocolate mixture.

Eating raw eggs just isn't something I want to gamble on, so whenever recipes traditionally call for them, and there is an easy way to cook them instead, that's the course I'll take.

Let Me Tell You About Pâte à Bombe

With this recipe, I turned to the french technique of making a pâte à bombe, which is basically a swiss meringue but with egg yolks, or in this case, whole eggs. There are a few different ways the eggs and sugar could be cooked, but to avoid dealing with hot sugar syrups, I decided to cook the pâte à bombe over a double boiler.

Since most people don't keep an actual double boiler in their homes, (including me), a "makeshift" double boiler will do just fine.

To set up a double-boiler you'll need a small pot of water and a large heat proof bowl that will fit over the top of the pot. A small pot works best because it only heats the bottom of the bowl and not the sides, which I find useful for preventing any crystalized sugar.

In practice, making a pâte à bombe looks like whisking eggs and sugar in a large metal bowl (I don't recommend glass at all for this purpose, metal is best) and cooking it on top of a pot of simmering water. There is a visual tutorial of this below.

Visual Overview of Steps to Make French Silk Filling

As mentioned above, it's important to have all your ingredients ready and prepared as instructed before you get going with the chocolate part. Once you start making the mousse, you can't stop and it's a very fast sequence of events.

Here is a visual overview:

Once you've made your filling, place it inside of the blind baked pie crust. It then needs to chill for 2-4 hours.

Quick Tips for the Chocolate Mousse Filling

Here are best tips for successfully making the chocolate silk filling:

• Read the recipe through, and get all your mise en place ready before beginning.
• Don't walk away from the cooking eggs. While the sugar does offer some "protection" of coagulating egg proteins (aka scrambled eggs), it's best to maintain some movement in this mixture as it comes to 160ºF
• While it's always useful to have an instant-read thermometer handy when cooking eggs, in this case, it will be very clear when the eggs are cooked to the correct temperature. You'll find they will thicken up enough that when the mixture runs off the whisk, it will create a "ribbon" that holds it's shaped for a few seconds before fading away.
• Finely chop the chocolate, it ensures it melts quickly.
• Immediately add the finely chopped chocolate to the hot pâte à bombe. The carryover heat is what is going to melt the chocolate.
• Make sure the butter is very soft. Again, it's the carryover heat that is going to incorporate the softened butter into the chocolate. However, it's important that the butter is still in its solid form when it's combined with the chocolate. If it's too cold, it won't combine with the chocolate. And if you try to add melted butter because you didn't soften it on time, it also will encounter problems during the mixing process.

The Special Whipped Cream that Brings it All Together

What would a French Silk Pie be without a pile of whipped cream on top?

This recipe calls for adding cream fraiche (or sour cream) to the heavy cream, along with a touch of sugar and vanilla. It adds a unique element to the pie that really brings it all together.

A bonus of adding creme fraiche to the whipped cream is that it helps stabilize it. While whipped cream is always better served fresh, the stabilized whipped cream will hold up well on any leftover pie for about 2 days if need be.

How to Serve It

It's perfectly acceptable to leave the pie unadorned since it already has that gorgeous cream top. But, it's always a fun idea to add a little decorative flair on top.

Since you are already chopping chocolate to make the filling, it makes sense to chop some extra to sprinkle on top of the pie. You could also drizzle a bit of chocolate ganache on top of the whipped cream! Or purchase some chocolate curls.

Storing Leftovers

Serve the pie soon after it has finished setting up (about 4 hours or up to 1 day). The pie will keep in the refrigerator for a few days, but it's best served within two days.

More Chocolate Recipes

I am so honored when you make a recipe from my site! If you make this Chocolate French Silk Pie, please leave a star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating with your experience! If you have any questions about this recipe, feel free to comment here, and tag me on instagram!