The Best Raspberry Cheesecake Pie

As it happens, no one in my family feels it is essential to have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Turkey, yes. Pumpkin pie, not so much.

This pie is much fancier than pumpkin pie, but it’s not at all difficult. Also, it involves raspberries and cheesecake and chocolate, so it’s perfect for a party.

So here you go:

Layered Raspberry Cheesecake Pie

1 baked pastry pie crust. My mother’s good with pie pastry, so she made this for me.

3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch
8 oz fresh or frozen raspberries

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/3 C sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 C heavy cream, whipped

2 oz semisweet chocolate
3 Tbsp butter

Okay, if you need to bake the pie crust, do that.

Combine the sugar, cornstarch, and raspberries in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes. Pour into pie crust and set aside to cool.

Whip the cream.

Beat together cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until fluffy. Fold in whipped cream. Spread over raspberry layer. Chill at least 3 hours.

Now, the chocolate, even with all that butter, will firm up too much if you put it on the pie and then chill the pie. This will make it hard to cut the pie. So ideally, you will do this next bit shortly before you serve the pie, like right before everyone sits down for dinner.

Melt the chocolate with the butter. Cool for five minutes. Spread over pie. I think it is pretty to leave a thin border of white showing around the edge of the pie, but that’s up to you. If you happen to have a single fresh raspberry sitting around, place this in the center of the pie as a garnish. You can chill the pie about two minutes in order to set the chocolate, although it will set anyway.

Serve within an hour or two and the chocolate will not have hardened too much.

If you chill the pie with the chocolate layer in place, then you can use a sharp knife to gently score the chocolate. Repeatedly score along a single line and you will eventually be able to get through the chocolate layer neatly, without squishing the cheesecake filling out the sides of the piece of pie. But you see why it’s easier to cut the pie before the chocolate gets too hard.