Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Pie -- Something Sweet for the Days That Ask the Most of You

Birthday week. I turned seventy-three on Monday. The number has been on my mind since I made coffee that morning — seventy-three, the age my father was when his heart stopped on April 18, 1995, the age that has lived in the back of my mind as a kind of reference number for thirty years now. I called David Monday morning. He picked up on the first ring. We did not mention why I had called or why he had answered so quickly. We talked for ten minutes about the weather and about Karen and about a book he had been reading, and then we hung up, and the call did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was to mark the day without acknowledging the marking.

Sarah called at her usual 8 PM and we talked for a while. Lucy and Ben texted in the morning. Teddy called from a job site in the afternoon. James and Anna texted at lunch. Carol sent a card by mail that arrived Wednesday. The day was made up of the small punctuations of being noticed by people who love you, which is not a thing to be taken lightly at any age and which becomes more substantial with each year that passes.

I made a small maple cream pie in the afternoon, the way Helen used to make it for me. I ate a slice with coffee at the kitchen table and read Frost's "An Old Man's Winter Night" again. I thought about my father. I thought about whether I have lived more or less wisely than he had at seventy-three, and the answer is probably the same, which is that we have both lived the lives that were available to us in the times we were given, and that the comparison is not particularly useful except as a way of feeling close to him, and feeling close to him is the only useful purpose of the comparison.

The leg has been bothering me all week — the cold weather aggravating the metal, the metal aggravating the muscles, the muscles aggravating the joint. I have been using the heating pad in the evenings and the aspirin sparingly and the woodstove for direct heat when I can get close enough. The leg is, after all this time, both a part of me and a separate thing — a tenant who has not paid rent in fifty-three years but who I cannot evict and have stopped trying to. We have an arrangement. The arrangement involves more accommodation in the cold weeks. I accommodate. The leg responds. The week ends with the leg roughly back to normal, which is to say still there, still aware of itself, still mostly tolerable.

The blog post for the week was about the birthday — short, restrained, mostly about the maple cream pie, with a single sentence about my father at the end that I considered cutting and decided to keep. The sentence was: my father, Edward, would have been a hundred and three this April, and he died at seventy-three, the age I am today, and he taught me to tap the maples that I will tap again in seven weeks. The sentence is true. The sentence is enough.

Helen’s maple cream pie is what I made that afternoon, and the recipe I keep returning to for days that ask something of you — but the one I want to leave here, for anyone who needs a pie that comes together without much fuss and rewards you generously, is this chocolate chip peanut butter version, which has the same spirit: cold, creamy, a little rich, the kind of thing you eat slowly with good coffee and no particular hurry. I have made it for birthdays when baking felt like too much and for ordinary Tuesdays when it felt like exactly the right thing, and it has never once failed to do its quiet work.

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Pie

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 4 hours 20 minutes (includes chilling) | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 1 prepared 9-inch chocolate graham cracker crust (store-bought or homemade)
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened to room temperature
• 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream, cold
• 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
• 2 tablespoons chocolate syrup, for drizzling (optional)

Instructions

1. Beat the cream cheese. In a large mixing bowl, beat the softened cream cheese with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes until completely smooth and no lumps remain. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
2. Add peanut butter and sugar. Add the creamy peanut butter, sifted powdered sugar, and vanilla extract to the cream cheese. Beat on medium speed until fully combined and the mixture is smooth and uniform, about 2 minutes.
3. Whip the cream. In a separate chilled bowl, whip the cold heavy cream with clean beaters on high speed until stiff peaks form, 3 to 4 minutes. Do not over-whip.
4. Fold together. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the whipped cream into the peanut butter mixture in three additions, folding just until no white streaks remain. Take care not to deflate the cream.
5. Add chocolate chips. Fold in 3/4 cup of the mini chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the filling.
6. Fill the crust. Spoon the filling into the prepared pie crust and spread it into an even layer with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon, mounding it slightly in the center.
7. Top and chill. Scatter the remaining 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips over the top of the pie. Drizzle with chocolate syrup if desired. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight, until the filling is fully set and slices cleanly.
8. Serve. Remove from the refrigerator 10 minutes before serving. Slice with a sharp knife rinsed under warm water between cuts. Serve cold with coffee.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 510 | Protein: 10g | Fat: 36g | Carbs: 40g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 310mg