Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie

This recipe is adapted from one in a Country Cooking cookbook I have. Adapted because I decided to make it, spur of the moment, while shopping last week. I saw the cheap strawberries and remembered this recipe I had read a while back. I knew it had a cream cheese layer, so I bought cream cheese. I suspected it required sour cream, so I bought that, too. When I got home, I realized I only had one cream cheese package, while the recipe called for two. Oh, well. In hindsight, I can't imagine how the printed recipe could be better, because the ratio of cream cheese layer to strawberry seemed perfect the way I made it.

Another thing that makes this pie special is the dark chocolate layer. I completely forgot about this, so I didn't buy the appropriate dark chocolate squares or anything. But I did have about 1/3 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips left in my chocolate chip snackin' bag (c'mon, don't judge). And since my unofficial motto for cooking is "dirty as few pans as possible," I didn't melt it in a double boiler. Too fussy!

So here's how I made it:

Bake a pie crust for the recommended time. I used the rolled-up kind for this pie and thought it was delicious, more so than the pie shells.

Right away when the pie comes out of the oven, sprinkle your chocolate chips evenly-ish over the bottom of the pie. Pop back in the oven for a minute. Then pull the pie back out, and spread the now-melty chips around the bottom and up the sides a little bit. Then put the pie crust in the fridge to chill.

Blend together: one package of cream cheese (I used reduced fat, but don't use fat-free...that stuff is the devil), 1/3 cup sour cream (ditto low-fat versus fat-free), 1/2 cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Once your chocolate has set and is cool, spread the cream cheese mixture on top. Refrigerate and chill for at least two hours.

Then, once that's chilled, top with fresh strawberries, hulled and placed stem-end down. I also cut the strawberries in half but kept the halves together on the pie for both appearances but ease of eating. I'm not sure how many this will take...it all depends on the size of the berries.

Then melt 1/3-1/2 cup of strawberry jam in the microwave (took about thirty seconds) and "glaze" the berries by pouring the jam over top. Refrigerate until ready to serve.