Peanut Butter–Chocolate Pie
There's a general rule among Reese's Peanut Butter Cup aficionados that you always buy the seasonal releases (hearts for Valentine’s, eggs for Easter, pumpkins for Halloween, etc.) because they are the most recently made and are, thus, the “freshest.” This may be why I love them so much: the first ones I ever ate were the peanut butter eggs sold for Easter. The chocolate-to–peanut butter ratio leaned more in favor of the peanut butter filling, crumbly and smooth at the same time, with a chocolate shell, soft and tender in that way that only mass-produced milk chocolate can get. Other kids could keep their gooey Creme Eggs and technicolor marshmallow birds—all I wanted were those peanut butter eggs.Today, I've graduated to a different brand of peanut butter cups (one with darker chocolate and freshly ground peanut butter filling, topped with crunchy flakes of salt), which serves as the inspiration for this decadent peanut butter–chocolate pie. The pie uses a peanut butter pudding as the filling, and the top is a simple dark chocolate ganache mottled with flaky sea salt. The crust is a from-scratch version of a chocolate cookie crust that’s typically made with those impossibly thin Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers that always seem to be out of stock at my neighborhood market.Instead of asking you to go on a wild goose chase for those cookies, this crust comes together with ingredients you're bound to have in your pantry: flour, cocoa, sugar, butter, and salt, which you blend together, bake until it's crunchy and fragrant, then simply blitz and toss it with a little extra butter. With the smooth, nutty peanut butter filling, glistening ganache, and salty roasted peanuts on top, this pie evokes all the sweetness of a childhood memory, delivered in the form of an elegant, nuanced dessert that adults will want to savor.
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