Chocolate Cheese Pie for Greg

This chocolate cheese pie was my brother’s favorite pie, and he always requested it for his birthday dessert. Read on to learn more about the wonderful person my brother Greg was and to get the recipe for his pie. It truly is delicious. Several people have contacted me to tell me they made it in his honor, and I am always so touched by these messages.

Enjoy this pie that is part cheesecake and part chocolate pie. And read about Greg, because as long as there are people to remember him and hear his story, he will live on.

For ease of browsing, you can find all my pie recipes in one place, and cheesecakes live here. Let’s get to it.

Chocolate Cheese Pie, At a Glance

You can make this pie simply, or you can get more complicated. For example, you can make your own fudge layer from scratch, or you can buy store-bought fudge. It’s up to you.

As written, here’s an overview of the pie:

✅Skill Level: Intermediate
✅Skills: Making a Crumb Crust, Simple cheesecake batter, fudge sauce, baking
✅Type: Layered Pie
✅Number of Ingredients: 8
✅Prep Time: 1 hour
✅Cook Time: 1 hour, 5-10 minutes
✅Yield: 12 slices, but you may want to cut smaller slices. It’s very rich!

Most of this post is about my brother. If you prefer, you can Jump Straight to the Recipe

What Might Have Been

My brother would have turned forty-six today. I am certain that he would still be living in Charlotte, so we would have driven over and had a wonderful meal with my mom and dad, him and his wife and kids. We’d have played with his dogs—he surely would have had two or three—and checked out his newest gadgets.

He would have worshiped at the Apple alter. Or maybe he would have been an Android guy. Google Glass? He’d have loved it. He would have had the newest, most bleeding edge technology that he could hunt down.

Greg never had the chance to be the wonderful father and husband that I know he would have been. My brother only lived to see thirty-one birthdays, and he was sick for the last three that we celebrated together.

Closure? Is There Such a Thing?

We grew up in a household where if you didn’t talk about the bad things and just pretended everything was copacetic, then things would be copacetic. We lived by The Law of Attraction’s more pessimistic cousins, The Laws of Selective Attention and Willful Ignorance.

All during Greg’s illness, we never discussed—or at least the two of us never discussed—the “what if you don’t make it” scenario. We hung out on Friday nights, watching movies and listening to Guns N Roses. To this day, I cannot hear Paradise City without thinking of my brother and the whiplash I used to give myself doing the Axel Shuffle, whipping my head around and belting into one of the handles of Greg’s nunchucks.

Even towards the end, when he no longer had the strength to tie his own shoes and his vision was deteriorating, we never had The Conversation.

Even when the head of the bone marrow transplant team stopped visiting him to see how he was doing because he was obviously going to be just another casualty along the road to better and more successful bone marrow transplants, a data point on a graph, we still talked about the future and ended every conversation with “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Were we being optimistic, or were we intentionally avoiding what was looming? I think the latter. Part of me wishes that we had had some closure.

A frank discussion, an exchanging of I love yous and a chance to say how much I would miss him when he was gone.

I would like to have that conversation locked away in my memory so I could take it out on occasion and look at it in the light.

The New Car

Just a short few months before he died, he bought a new car. We were all stunned and heartened by the apparent optimism that purchase signaled. His choice was between a sweet little BMW 325i and a Bonneville.

I scratched my head when he drove home the Bonneville, but once he was gone, it became obvious to me that he made his choice with my mom in mind. He must have known she wouldn’t have felt comfortable in the small BMW, so he bought her car and broke it in for her.

She still drives that Bonneville. I think she always will. (Mom now drives an Elantra. She kept the Bonneville for years and years, but she finally let it go.)

I Was a Sister. I Am a Sister.

Driving back to my parents’ house from the hospital on that last day, I remember so many good, Southern people were already at our house, chatting in hushed tones and waiting for us to come home so they could place aluminum foil-wrapped tins and trays into our hands along with the damp-eyed and heartfelt Oh we are so sorry’s.

I found myself in a conversation with a few folks in which we quietly debated which was worse: someone cut down in an instant, or someone who lingers and whose life slowly leaks out, like water from a rusted bucket. We decided that neither way was good.

I found out later that those people had no idea who I was. I was Greg’s sister for all of his 31 years. That is who I was.

That is still who I am, even after all this time.

The first few times I dreamed about my brother after he died, he had That Look about him. The simultaneously bloated and emaciated look of cancer patients on steroids. His hair was stubble. There was still a huge, sutured scar on one side of his head where the surgeons had gone in to try to understand why he was blind.

They never did find an obvious cause.

When I finally was able to dream past the shell of his illness and see Greg as he was before his diagnosis, I woke up smiling. And now, when I see him in dreams, he always looks as he did before I had to learn that BMT didn’t mean Behavior Management Technician but Bone Marrow Transplant.

The vocabulary of cancer is learned quickly, and while numb, but that is another story which has nothing to do with food for the body or for the soul.

My Brother, the Self-Taught Cook

Greg was a great cook, and he helped me learn to cook. I hosted a huge dinner party in my little crack house of a duplex once for which I had made an enormous vat of sauce for manicotti. I kept tasting it and adding herbs and tasting it and adding pepper and tasting it and adding wine, and it just tasted…muddy. I called Greg in a panic and asked him to stop by on his way home from work to tell me what he thought.

He walked in, took a taste, rolling the thick red sauce around in his mouth as if he were a professional sommelier, and said, “It needs sugar.”

He was right, too.

We used to make elaborate, multi-course meals for mom and dad for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We’d go to the library and find exotic cookbooks and copy the recipes we wanted to make, and then we’d make them. He was the chef. I was his sous.

The Chocolate Cheese Pie: A Magical Pie

Greg never asked for cake on his birthday. For years, his birthday cake was pie. Mrs. Cornwell’s Chocolate Cheese Pie. Two parts cheesecake, one part fudge sauce and one part sweetened sour cream topping adding up to one flavorful, rich, sexy pie.

I always looked forward to his birthday dinners because I knew they would end with That Pie. Now that he is gone, if I’m going to be at Mom and Dad’s for my birthday and she asks me what I’d like for my birthday dessert, I always ask for Greg’s pie.

What do you want for your birthday dessert? Chocolate cheesecake pie. Always.

Today, I make this chocolate cheese pie in memory of Greg. Of his friendship and his kind, steady, gentle spirit. I love you, brother, and while I most often think about you with a smile, I will miss you for the rest of my life.

I’d love it if you would make one, too. Here’s how:

How to Make a Chocolate Cheese Pie

Here are the ingredients you’ll need. Some are used more than once in different components:

For the Crust

• Chocolate Grahams: Feel free to sub regular Graham crackers, vanilla wafers, or make a chocolate sable crust
• salt: Just a pinch. Fine or kosher will work
• instant coffee: optional, but deepens the chocolate flavor
• butter: to hold the crust together and allow it to get crisp. Butter also carries flavor

For the Cheesecake layer

This is a very basic cheesecake layer. It’s also very delicious!

• cream cheese: provides the body, bulk, and tang for the mixture
• eggs: allows the cream cheese custard to set
• sugar: sweetens the cream cheese layer
• salt: brings the flavors into focus
• vanilla: Rounds out all the flavors

For the Fudge layer

This fudge layer is basically a ganache with a few extra flavorings. You can also use straight-up ganache, my hot fudge recipe, or jarred fudge sauce.

• heavy cream: The liquid for the sauce. You can also use regular whipping cream
• corn syrup: For body. This is an optional ingredient
• dark chocolate: 60%-70% cocoa solids will work best here. Good quality chocolate chips are fine as well
• instant coffee: optional. Adds depth to the chocolate flavor
• vanilla: Rounds out all the flavors
• salt: Brings the flavors into focus

For the sour cream layer

This is one of my favorite things ever. Sweetened sour cream is the best. When baked for just a few minutes, it sets up and is sliceable. At room temperature, it makes an excellent fruit dip!

• sour cream: Adds the most delicious, tangy dairy flavor
• salt: Brings all the flavors into focus
• sugar: For the prettiest appearance, use white sugar. Brown sugar will give you a bit more flavor, but it won’t make a pale white layer. It’s entirely your call. It will be great either way
• vanilla: Rounds out all the flavors

Procedure

In a nutshell, this is how you make this pie:

1. Make and bake the crust.
2. Mix up the cheesecake layer, pour into the crust, and bake.
3. Make the fudge layer and spread over the still-warm pie.
4. Whisk all the sour cream topping ingredients together, carefully spread over the fudge layer, and bake another few minutes to set the topping.

Cool, then chill for at least 6 hours before slicing and serving. Store leftovers in the fridge for up to 5 days.

For best flavor and texture, allow the slices to sit out for about 45 minutes before serving.

Equipment

You will need to make this pie in a 9/5″ deep dish pie pan. This is what it is scaled for. If you only have standard pie pans, make 2 smaller pies, dividing all the layers evenly between two pie pans. You will need to make extra crust mixture, though.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.

Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.

If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.

A Note About Measurements

My recipes are almost all written by weight, including liquids, unless otherwise specified.

For accuracy and consistency of results, I encourage you to buy–and use–a kitchen scale.

I promise that baking and cleanup will be so much quicker and easier.

This is the scale that I recommend for home use. I have owned and used one for years.

Love This Chocolate Cheese Pie? Please Rate and Review. Thanks!

Consider making this chocolate cheesecake pie in honor of someone you love. It is truly excellent. Greg did have impeccable taste.