Double-Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

When Tim and I spent a weekend at the Wayside Inn in Chatham, MA we took some complimentary issues of Food & Wine and Saveur from their library. This recipe came from the February 2006 issue of Food & Wine, and we made it as a decadant dessert to serve after our light and summery meal of pasta with smashed peas.

This is the recipe as I made it, which is an alteration of the original recipe:

First you make a chocolate cookie crust:

4 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped (1/2 cup)
1/2 stick unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
8 oz chocolate wafer cookies (from a 9 oz package - enjoy the other ounce as a snack), finely ground (2 cups)

Preheat the oven to 375. In a medium glass bowl combine the chocolate and butter and microwave at high in 20-second intervals until the chocolate is melted. Stir well, then stir in cookie crumbs. Press mixture over the bottom and 1 1/2 inches up the sides of a 9" springform pan. Bake the crust for 10 minutes, or until set... the crust will continue to firm as it cools.

Meanwhile, make the peanut butter filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup well-chilled heavy cream
salt

Beat the cream cheese with the peanut butter, sugar and vanilla until blended.

In another bowl whip the chilled cream until firm.









Fold one-third of the cream into the peanut butter mixture to loosen it, then fold in the remaining whipped cream.






Spoon the filling into the crust, smoothing the surface. Sprinkle lightly with salt and refrigerate until set, about 3 hours.


Make the chocolate topping:
4 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup heavy cream

In a medium glass bowl, combine the chocolate with the heavy cream and microwave in 20-second intervals until the chocolate is melted and the cream is hot. Stir the chocolate mixture until blended, them let cool to barely warm, stirring occasionally.
Spread the chocolate topping over the peanut butter filling and refrigerate until firm, about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with shopped peanuts. Carefully run a shrp knife around the edge of the pie crust to loosen it, them remove the springform ring. Serve pie chilled, or slightly cooler than room temperature.
When making slices, run your knife under hot water between each cut.

In the original recipe they want you to use chunky peanut butter for the filling, and then you add another 3/4 cup of chopped peanuts to that mixture. I did not think I wanted a chunky texture to my pie filling, so I used creamy peanut butter and did not add any extra peanuts to the filling. I did like the chopped peanuts on top of the pie though, so wonder if I would like them in the filling... might have to try that next time.
The pie's consistency was much softer and creamier than I expected... it does not get hard in the fridge, so we did like it colder than room temperature. We and our guests kindly tested both temperatures for you, our blog reader's interest!