- 40 thin chocolate wafers, ground fine in a blender or food processor (about 2 1/4 cups crumbs)
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/4 cups well-chilled whipping cream
- 1/3 cup salted, roasted peanuts, chopped fine
- Garnish: lightly sweetened whipped cream and whole salted roasted peanuts
- Reserve 1/4 cup cookie crumbs. In a bowl combine remaining cookie crumbs and butter and press into bottom and side of a 10-inch (1 1/2 quart) pie plate. Chill shell.
- In a heavy saucepan dissolve sugar in milk over moderate heat, stirring, and remove pan from heat. Whisk in peanut butter and vanilla until combined well and cool in a bowl set in a larger bowl of ice water, stirring occasionally.
- In another bowl beat cream until it just holds stiff peaks and fold into peanut-butter mixture with chopped peanuts. Turn mixture into shell, smoothing top. Sprinkle reserved cookie crumbs around edge of pie.
- Pipe rosettes of whipped cream decoratively onto crumbs and top rosettes with whole peanuts. Freeze pie, uncovered, until frozen hard, about 5 hours. Pie may be made 2 days ahead and frozen, covered with plastic wrap and foil after 5 hours.
- Let pie stand in refrigerator 30 minutes before serving.