After the Linzertorte “bust” I decided to back to some basic Americana pie. What could be more American than peanut butter (yeah, yeah, I know you were going to say apple pie, but this is my blog) and chocolate?

Irma says in the book that this is a simple pie and sounds like kid stuff, but has a complexity and subtle flavor that will surprise.

We were invited over for dinner to the home of some of my favorite people ever. I first met Edwin and Patty when they were young and fresh married leaving for deep dark Africa as missionaries. In fact I met them at their going away potluck celebration as a guest of my best friend in the whole world Kevin. I remember a little envy at the things they were going to experience and accomplish. Between then and now the sun has risen and set quite a few times. Their twin daughters, Jessica and Bethany are both in their first year of high-school and the youngest; Tabitha is, well, I do not know how old she is…probably 6 or 8. Anyway we were invited to have supper with them and Patty tells me they are planning curry chicken. I tell her that curry wrecks havoc on my wife’s digestive system, so we had Mexican instead. Thanks, Patty.

I thought my daughter, Rachel would come with us and she was dragging her feet, not wanting to go and my son, Dave pops up with, “Hey, I want to go.” Then Rachel decides it might not be so terrible with Dave there. As it turned out we all have a really fun time and even Rachel, although she would not admit it, was glad she decided to go along.

I decided to bake and bring the Peanut Butter Pie. It has a crumb crust which can be made with graham crackers, but I thought it would be better made with chocolate wafer cookies. The filling itself is almost like a mousse, very light and the subtle flavor of peanut butter and cream cheese with the chocolate crust was very good by itself, but there was more. The pie is topped with a thin hard chocolate glaze and I made whipped cream for a garnish. There were nine of us and a pie that goes into eight servings so Patty and I cut it into ten slices. As it turned out we could have cut it into twelve servings because it was so rich.

Dinner was very good.

The company was great.

The game was goofy (fun).

And I think the pie turned out to be pretty good, too!

Thanks to our American-African friends for having us over.

Linzertorte

Funny how things go sometimes. My oldest daughter, Keri and my two sweet grandchildren, Erik who is two and Eliana who is eight months old, just left Sunday after staying for two weeks. They did not seem to demand much of my time, but I got pretty much nothing done while they were here.

I finally got around to making the Linzertorte for the family in our congregation that is, well, very European. I thought they would enjoy it more than my family due to the crust which is made from nuts and The Wife ‘O My Life does not like nuts in baked goods…not even brownies. When I gave it to them it was the oldest boy’s birthday, but he said he does not enjoy nuts that much either so it was “ok.” The king of the castle said he really liked it. The queen said it was pretty, but lacked the depth and complexity of flavor that she is used to in a Linzertorte. So all in all I feel it was not a great effort, but I ticked one more pie/tart off the list.