PEANUT BUTTER PIE

This dessert could not be easier to make, it’s the perfect no bake summer pie you can bring at your next family gathering. This pie has a special place in my heart, I discovered it while working at this restaurant in the U.S. At the end of the day, me and my co-workers would order a giant slice of this peanut butter pie to share. The portion sizes were so out of control, one slice would be enough for 3 to 4 people. My two complaints are that that pie was always too sweet for my liking and the crust to filling ratio way too extreme. No need to worry about that anymore, I fixed both of those issues in this recipe. While still very rich, the saltiness of the crust, plus the peanuts on top will surely balance out the sweetness of the filling!

INGREDIENTS (8-12 servings)

INSTRUCTIONS

Step 1

Finely crumble the cookies (using a food processor, a rolling pin, etc.) and melt the butter.

Step 2

In a bowl, combine the crumbled cookies, melted butter and salt and mix until the cookies are fully coated in butter. The mixture should hold its shape once pressed in one’s hand.

Step 3

Add the cookie mixture into a pie or tart dish, roughly pressing the mixture down using a spoon, your hands or a glass. The dish should have a maximum of 25 cm or 8 inches in diameter, anything larger than that will lead to a way too thin of a pie crust!

Step 4

Once you are done making the pie crust, it’s time to pop the dish in the fridge until the peanut butter filling is done.

Step 5

If you are working with granulated sugar, make sure to grind it into a powder using a blender or a coffee grinder. If you don’t have that possibility, it will still work, you will need to mix the filling for a bit longer in order for the granulated sugar to properly get absorbed.

Step 6

Add the peanut butter, sugar, vanilla and salt to a bowl and mix everything together using a mixer or a spatula if you want to do this by hand. Mix until the sugar is fully incorporated (it took me 1 to 2 minutes of mixing with a hand mixer).

Step 7

Next, add the mascarpone cheese (or cream cheese) to the peanut butter sugar mixture and mix, once again, using a spatula or a mixture until the cheese has fully combined with the peanut butter (1 to 2 minutes). The cheese should be cold, taken straight out of the fridge.

Step 8

Next up, add the whipping cream to a clean bowl and whip it up, you want to get it to at least a soft peak stage.

Step 9

Once the cream has been whipped, it’s time to add it to the peanut butter mixture: first, add 1/3 of the whipping cream and roughly mix it into the peanut butter filling using a spatula. This will loosen up the peanut butter mixture, making it easier to fold the whipped cream into it. Next, add the rest (2/3) of the whipping cream to the bowl, making sure to fold it in this time.

NOTE

If for some reason your filling splits while mixing it, before deciding to throw it away, try warming it all up using a hair dryer. Yes, you read that correctly. Gently blow hot air on the mixture while slowly mixing it, this will cause all the ingredients to come to the same temperature and perhaps repairing the initial split. I used this trick so many times and it worked every single time!

Step 10

The last thing before decorating it is to dump all this silky peanut butter filling in the pie crust, level it and pop it back in the fridge, while you are preparing the toppings.

If you decide to skip the toppings, make sure to chill the pie in the fridge (preferably covered) for 2 to 3 hours before serving it, or until the peanut filling looks firm. You can also speed up the process by letting it chill in the freezer for 30 minutes to 1 hour. The pie freezes very well actually. I froze some of the pie overnight and it did not even need to be thawed before serving it.

TOPPINGS (optional)

Step 11

For the peanut praline:

• line a flat baking sheet with some parchment paper;
• chop half of the peanuts;
• add the granulated sugar to a pan over medium heat and let it get fully liquid and caramelize (do not stir it);
• once the sugar is a golden amber color, take the pan off the heat and pop in the chopped peanuts, mixing everything together with a wooden spoon or a spatula;
• pour the sugar mixture onto the baking sheet, roughly evening it out with a wooden spoon or a spatula;
• let the praline fully cool down;
• once cooled, crumble the praline into bite size pieces.

Step 12

Chop the rest of the peanuts, melt the chocolate and crumble the Oreo cookies and you are ready to decorate: drizzle the chocolate on the pie, sprinkle the cookie crumbs, chopped peanuts and peanut praline on top of it and finish it all off with a good sprinkle of flakey salt.