The Original Texas Flood Pie

Texas Flood Pie is rich, chocolatey, gooey, and completely unconcerned with moderation. Loaded with marshmallows, pecans, and enough chocolate to make your dentist sigh heavily, it's the kind of no-bake dessert that disappears long before the coffee is fully brewed.

Table of Contents

• ⁉️ What is Texas Flood Pie
• 🧾 Ingredients you'll need
• 📖 Recipe
• 🔪 How to make Texas flood pie
• 🥊 Texas Flood Pie vs Mississippi Mud Pie
• 🥜 Peanut butter substitutions
• 📚 More no bake pies you'll love
• 💬 Comments

⁉️ What is Texas Flood Pie

Texas Flood Pie is a rich Southern chocolate dessert loaded with gooey marshmallows, crunchy pecans, and enough chocolate and peanut butter to make sensible decisions difficult. Think of it as Mississippi Mud Pie's bigger, louder Texas cousin.

Despite the name, it has nothing to do with weather. The "flood" comes from the layers of chocolate and marshmallow that seem to spill across the pie with every slice. It's sweet, messy, over-the-top, and exactly the sort of dessert that disappears first at church suppers, family reunions, and potlucks.

If you've never heard of Texas Flood Pie before, don't feel bad. That's because I made it up and published it back in 2015 during some particularly heavy storms with (you guessed it) flooding.

Since then, it's wandered across the internet, picked up a few copycats, and apparently inspired people to reminisce fondly about a childhood dessert that did not exist until after I'd made it. Bless their hearts.

Salty, sweet, crunchy, and creamy, Texas Flood Pie is the perfect dessert if you like Mississippi Mud Pie but want something bigger 'n better.

🧾 Ingredients you'll need

If chocolate, marshmallows, pecans, and peanut butter sound like the start of a beautiful bad decision, you're in the right place.

• Ritz crackers - The buttery little troublemakers that make up the crust. Graham crackers are fine, but Ritz crackers bring a salty swagger to the party.
• Butter - Because if we're making a pie called Texas Flood Pie and there's not an alarming amount of butter involved, we've lost the plot.
• Vanilla salt (optional) - A tiny pinch adds bakery-shop magic. Leave it out if you don't have it. Nobody's calling the Pie Police.
• Cream cheese - Keeps the filling rich, creamy, and emotionally supportive.
• Peanut butter - Adds just enough nutty flavor to make people squint thoughtfully and ask, "What IS that?"
• Browned butter - Regular butter grows up, gets a leather jacket, and becomes browned butter. Mysterious, smoky, and obsession-worthy.
• Milk chocolate chips - Smooth, sweet, and determined to make this pie impossible to stop eating.
• Bittersweet chocolate chips - Because every good dessert needs one ingredient willing to provide adult supervision.
• Light corn syrup - Helps everything stay smooth, glossy, and scandalously sliceable.
• Pecans - This is Texas. The pecans aren't optional. They're practically a state requirement.
• Marshmallows - The reason it's called a flood pie instead of a perfectly reasonable chocolate pie.
• Powdered sugar - Sweetens everything up without leaving behind a gritty attitude.
• Heavy cream - The accomplice that turns a pile of chocolate chips into glossy ganache. Without it, you've got chocolate chips. With it, you've got a situation.

Don't forget to grab the free printable kitchen cheat sheet with extra tips, storage info, and more.

📖 Recipe

🔪 How to make Texas flood pie

We're basically layering delicious decisions on top of other delicious decisions until a pie happens.

1. Crush the crackers into fine crumbs and mix with melted butter. Press into a pie pan and bake.
2. Spread the dark chocolate ganache into the bottom of the cooled crust.
3. Spoon the peanut butter mousse over the fudge layer.
4. Sprinkle with chocolate chips, marshmallows, and chopped pecans. Chill and top with milk chocolate ganache.

I love all the no-bake, chocolatey goodness in this pie! If you like coconut and pecans you should also try my no-bake German Chocolate pie!

🥊 Texas Flood Pie vs Mississippi Mud Pie

Texas Flood Pie and Mississippi Mud Pie are definitely cousins, but they don't show up to family reunions dressed the same.

Traditional Mississippi Mud Pie usually focuses on layers of chocolate, often with a cookie crust and a dense, fudgy filling.

Texas Flood Pie takes a different route, piling on gooey marshmallows, crunchy pecans, peanut butter, and a glossy chocolate ganache that threatens to spill over the edge with every slice.

If Mississippi Mud Pie is rich and refined, Texas Flood Pie kicked off its boots, grabbed a second helping, and invited the whole table to join in.

🥜 Peanut butter substitutions

Almond butter, cashew butter, or cookie butter will all work in this recipe, although each one changes the flavor a little. Almond butter gives the pie a slightly nuttier flavor, cashew butter stays mild and creamy, and cookie butter leans fully into dessert territory.

If nut allergies are a concern, sunflower seed butter is your best bet. The flavor is a little different, but it still provides the creamy texture the filling needs. Just avoid natural nut butters that separate easily. This pie has enough chaos going on already.

📚 More no bake pies you'll love

If this Texas Flood Pie has you reconsidering your relationship with chocolate, you're in good company. My no-bake Hershey Pie is rich, creamy, and dangerously easy to make, while French Silk Pie delivers that smooth, mousse-like texture that makes people close their eyes after the first bite and forget what they were talking about.

For something a little more nostalgic, try my old-fashioned Chocolate Cream Pie. It uses the microwave instead of the stovetop, which means less fuss, no scorching, and more pie. And if you're firmly on Team Peanut Butter, my Peanut Butter Icebox Pie is loaded with creamy peanut butter flavor and practically demands a cold glass of milk alongside it.

2015

I think this is the most rain we've gotten since the flood of 2004. All of the cattle tanks, creeks, and lakes in my area are full to overflowing and the water table is back at a good place -- I think people probably don't need to worry about their wells at this point. Everything is green and flowering, too.

We were at a Bed & Breakfast in Glen Rose, about 1 ½ hours away, over the weekend. We stayed at a lovely little inn that was right on the Brazos river. When we got there the river was calm and peaceful but by the next morning it was up a good 15 feet and raging.

So, y'all... floods were on my mind in 2015. And if you have to have a flood? Let it be chocolate.