Creamy and fluffy chocolate pie with a crumbly, salty pretzel crust. Salty meets sweet! 
This pie is my new favorite. I’ve actually made this pie 5 times in the past 2 weeks. The first was a disaster … I went into the kitchen with pretty much no plan for what I was making and wham…disaster! The second had to be thrown out because our refrigerator died and it deflated. Gotta love it when your refrigerator dies the week before Christmas! The next 3 pies were delicious and completely devoured. I’d like to say that we all shared equally, but I think I ate the majority of those 3 pies!
This pie looks like a boring old chocolate pie, but the salty pretzel crust really jazzes it up! I’m usually not a huge pie person, but I made sure there were no crust crumbs left on my plate for this one. This is a serious chocolate lover offense, but if someone made me choose between the chocolate filling and the pretzel crust… this would be the one instance where chocolate would be ditched.
This pie is actually really simple to make. Use normal pretzels for the crust… like Rold Gold or Snyder. I don’t think those flat pretzel crisps will give you the right texture. Also make sure to grind up the pretzels really well. You want pretzel flour. I tried the crust with slightly bigger chunks of pretzel and you actually get more salty pretzel flavor if the pretzels are completely ground up. Pie crust tip: use a metal measuring cup to really pack your crust into the pie dish.
Once the crust is completely cooled, make the filling. When looking for recipes to work off of for the filling, I kept finding recipes that used raw eggs. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the pie knowing I was eating a slice of pure raw egg. I can live with a spoonful of cookie dough but a whole slice grosses me out for some reason. I ended up adapting a recipe from Taste of Home because they heated the eggs and sugar in a double boiler first. Then you use the heat from the eggs and sugar mixture to melt the chocolate. To thicken up the chocolate mixture, you beat in butter (picture 1) and then fold in whipped cream (picture 2). Be careful to not deflate the whipped cream too much when you fold it in (picture 3)! Then pour the filling into the pie crust (picture 4). A straight edged spatula can be helpful to level the filling. 
Then all you have to do is hide the pie from your family, so you don’t have to share!
- 1 cup crushed pretzel (pretty much the texture of flour)
- 1 T. brown sugar
- 8 T. butter, melted
- 2 large eggs
- ⅔ cups granulated sugar
- 3 oz semisweet chocolate
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- ⅓ cup butter, softened
- ⅔ cup heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon powdered sugar
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Mix crushed pretzel and brown sugar together.
- Stir in melted butter.
- Press into a 9 inch pie dish.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Let cool.
- Whisk eggs and sugar together in a double boiler or in a bowl that will fit over a pot.
- On the stove, boil 2 inches of water in a pot and then place the pot with the eggs and sugar over the boiling water.
- Whisk constantly for about 5-7 minutes. The purpose of this is to dissolve the sugar, cook the eggs a smidge, and get the mixture hot enough to melt the chocolate, but you need to keep whisking to make sure the eggs don’t curdle.
- Remove from heat and add chocolate and vanilla and stir until smooth.
- Let cool for about 5 minutes. Make sure to stir every couple minutes to make sure the mixture doesn't get clumpy.
- Beat butter with an electric mixer until smooth.
- Add the mostly cooled chocolate mixture and beat on high for a few minutes. You want the mixture to turn from dark to light brown and get whipped up and fluffy. Set aside.
- In another bowl, whip the heavy cream until you have stiff peaks.
- Add powdered sugar.
- With a rubber spatula, fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. Be careful to not deflate the air from the whipped cream but also get the whole mixture to be consistent without chocolate streaks or whipped cream clumps.
- Pour the mixture into the piecrust.
- Cover and refrigerate for 5 hours.
Adapted filling from Taste of Home.
Looks awesome! Nice twist on a chocolate pie!