Pileos a la Melanie

Every once in a while, a bright and enthusiastic young person crosses my path and I’m reminded of how food inspired and enriched my own young adult life. Melanie Chislett is exactly that kind of person.

Melanie was our June intern at the test kitchen. As part of her intern duties I asked her to research a French company that makes an ingenious little coffee time snack called pileos, cone shaped confections that are filled with chocolate. The idea is that you set a pileo over your coffee and the steam from the drink warms up a chocolaty centre so that you have a super yummy snack to go with your latte or espresso.

We found the website for the ingenious pileo makers and Melanie contacted them and learned all about their product. I was thrilled. She’d done her job very well. I popped their info into my trend tracking file and felt satisfied that I had all the info I needed to write about how this cookie is an emerging food product idea in an upcoming issue of Topline Trends.

The next day, Melanie surprised us by bringing in her own version of pileos (which she calls mileos) for us to have with our morning coffee. I was thrilled by her enthusiasm and wanted to share her story and her biscotti based recipe for pileos (um, I mean mileos) with you today.

Melanie Chislett’s Mileos

1 cup oil
3 whole eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup refined sugar
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 box semi-sweet bakers chocolate (for the center)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325oF. Beat eggs and sugar to blend together, add oil. Add 3 cups of all-purpose flower and mix until well blended. Place in fridge for 30 minutes. Fill well-greased tart pans 3/4 full with dough and place 1/3 of a semi sweet bakers chocolate bar in the middle of the tart before placing in oven. This creates a pileo. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for 10 minutes. Place back in the oven and let bake for another 5 minutes to give the pileo a hard biscotti crust. Remove, let cool, then gently remove the pileos from the tart pan. If desired, sprinkle icing sugar on top of the inverted pileos.

Enjoy the smooth chocolate center after letting the pileo sit on top of your hot espresso cup for about 30 seconds.