Ed Levy from Baltimore was hoping I would be able to get the recipe for the salted chocolate caramel pie that he and his wife so enjoyed at Bottega, the new restaurant located in the Station North neighborhood in Baltimore. It was one of two desserts on the menu the night he and his wife dined there with friends, and they all thought it was one of the single best desserts they had ever had. They ordered one slice to share and liked it so much they asked for a second.

I contacted Adrien Aeschliman, the chef-owner of Bottega, and he graciously provided me with his recipe for the pie. He said he adapted it from a recipe from Marlow & Sons restaurant in Brooklyn, N.Y.

This deliciously decadent creation may not be for the inexperienced cook. It requires making a homemade caramel, which takes some degree of skill. I managed it on my first attempt, but if one were not vigilant, it would be easy to overcook it and have it seize up.

I loved the fact that Aeschliman uses chocolate Teddy Graham cookies for the crust. He said he did that because “you can find them lots of places, but basically any not-overly sweet simple chocolate cookie is gonna work.”

I made this pie and invited some friends over for dessert and coffee. While everyone took a look at it and asked for a small piece to start, more than one of my guests came back asking for a second sliver. This one is just too good to practice self-control.

Requests

Paula Pumphrey from Glen Burnie, Md., is seeking a recipe for chocolate fudge that she recalls from her childhood. She wrote that she went to P.S. 84 in South Baltimore, near Riverside Park, 60 or so years ago, and Salem Lutheran Church was right around the corner on Randall Street. She said “they made and sold the best chocolate fudge in the world. It was not soft. It was about half an inch thick and snapped when you bit into it. It immediately melted in your mouth.”

The only two ingredients she is sure it contained were sugar and canned milk (not sweetened condensed milk). She said that she is sure of those ingredients because back in the day, the families of the students would donate those ingredients to the school, which in turn would donate them to the church. Her 90-year-old mother, who also attended P.S. 84, remembers doing the same thing when she went there, but unfortunately she doesn’t remember the recipe.