Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

1 store-bought chocolate pie crust (or follow recipe for homemade crust, below)

8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened

1 c creamy peanut butter

3/4 c powdered sugar

1 c heavy cream, whipped

white & dark chocolate for garnish

With a hand mixer, blend cream cheese, peanut butter, and powdered sugar until well-combined. Whip cream in a separate bowl; fold whipped cream with peanut butter mixture. Gently spoon into pie crust; chill for at least two hours before serving. It sets up but not entirely firm; next time I'll put it in the freezer for about half an hour before serving. This is very good and melts in your mouth!

In the photo above, I melted about 1/4 c white chocolate chips and 1/4 c milk chocolate chips in two separate bowls in the microwave. To drizzle, I put the melted chocolate into two small ziploc bags, sealed them and punctured a small hole with a sharp knife. Then just squeeze the melted chocolate out; it's much easier to do it this way than to dirty up "real" drizzling equipment; just throw the ziploc away when you're done! Having this little bit of extra chocolate on top was a great combination with the peanut butter filling.

When I made this, I had a store-bought pie crust that I had intended to use... I picked up the bowl of filling ready to spoon it in, and it slipped and fell down right on my pie crust! The crust broke into a hundred pieces and was useless, so I had to come up with a recipe for a quick new crust. This one worked really well, and I think it tasted better than the store one would have. Most chocolate crusts are made from crushed oreos, or crushed chocolate graham crackers. I didn't have either of those things on hand but I always have regular graham crackers, so I used those and it worked very well. My favorite kinds of recipes are the ones with ingredients that I always have on hand anyway!

Chocolate pie crust

1 sleeve graham crackers (usually about 9)

2 T cocoa powder

1/3 white sugar

5 T melted butter

Preheat oven to 375. Putting half the graham crackers in at a time, crush in a ziploc bag by rolling over and over with a rolling pin until they're reduced to crumbs. Put graham cracker crumbs in a medium bowl; add cocoa and sugar. Combine with a fork, then pour in melted butter and mix well. Press crumbly mixture evenly into a regular pie plate (will be enough for deep dish too); bake for 10 minutes. Cool before putting peanut butter filling in it.