Not Just ANY Old Peanut Butter Pie!

Craving peanut butter pie?  This one has a surprise- a layer of rich, smooth chocolate inside!  Quick and easy to make– its sure to become a family favorite!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2c. of Nilla Wafers (crushed)
• 1/4c. brown sugar (firmly packed)
• 1/3 c. butter (melted)
• 1/4c. heavy whipping cream
• 1/2c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1c. creamy peanut butter
• 8oz. Philadelphia cream cheese
• 1/2c. sugar
• 3c. Cool Whip topping

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine Nilla Wafers, brown sugar and butter to make crust.  Press mixture into the bottom and up sides of a 9 inch pie plate.  Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.

In a small saucepan, heat whipping cream until it starts to bubble at edges (20-30 seconds).  Turn off heat, but leave pan on burner.  Add chocolate chips to cream, cover and allow to sit for 5 minutes.  Stir until well blended and pour into bottom of crust.  Place crust in refrigerator until chocolate is completely cool.

Beat together peanut butter, cream cheese and sugar.  Gently fold in Cool Whip and spoon mixture into crust and spread evenly over chocolate layer.  Garnish as desired. (I drizzled melted chocolate onto parchment paper that was wrapped around a rolling pin to get these fun decorations)

Keep chilled until served.

My thoughts:  This is such a wonderful combination of ingredients!  The crust was an inspiration from an ice cream pie I made once.   Nilla Wafers have such a great flavor and hold together so well for this.  The chocolate layer was in a Paula Deen cookbook- but she just put chocolate chips in- which hardened into an un-cuttable layer.  Adding the whipping cream makes this layer more like fudge (a ganache, in fact).  The peanut butter filling is 100% Judy Schneider- I can’t improve on it, its such a yummy peanut putter filling!  In this case, it does indeed take a village of amazing cooks to make a pie!  Hope you love it!