The pie baking has commenced!
I've been using this pie crust so far this year. For my initial round of PB pie over Thanksgiving, I made a crust that was basically a brownie, with different ratios of ingredients. Today I used the linked crust recipe but I swapped out 1/2 C of the flour with 1/4 C cocoa and 1/4 C sugar. It made a chocolate crust that wasn't overly sweet but tasted of chocolate.
It worked fantastically on the first two crusts, except that I'm still learning the art of pre-baking crusts. Even though I chilled the crust in the pan prior to baking, the crust didn't stay in its beautifully fluted shape. So for the next two crusts, I decided to weigh down the crusts. I'd read a few options, one of them being putting dried beans on waxed paper. The dough was hard to work with, which I attributed to not having the butter cold enough. I sorta pressed the crusts into pans and threw them in the oven with wax paper and beans inside.
A few minutes later, it really smelled strange in the kitchen. Suddenly it dawned on me that I hadn't put enough flour in this batch. No wonder the dough was uncooperative. I opened the oven to find that the extra butter had caused the dough to bubble over. I tried to pull out the wax paper and beans to allow the crust to bake better, since it was so liquidy. The combo of the butter and high temps caused the wax paper to be extremely fragile. It fell apart under the weight of the beans. A few of the beans had baked into the bubbly crust. I'd failed to set a timer so I had no idea how much longer to bake them.
I managed to shake the beans and wax paper out of the crusts and put them back in for a few minutes. I think they'll be okay. Not one of my better moments.
Peanut butter pie filling:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1 C powdered sugar
2 Tbsp (approximately) cocoa powder
1/3 C peanut butter
1/2 C milk
8 oz whipped topping
Beat together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and cocoa; then the peanut butter; then the milk. Finally, fold in the whipped topping. Put it in a pre-baked chocolate crust and freeze. Thaw 1/2 hour prior to serving, sprinkle grated chocolate or peanuts on top.
I followed the recipe great for Thanksgiving, unless you count adding cocoa. This time I also added vanilla, extra peanut butter, and used whipping cream and a bit of sugar in place of half the whipped topping. To be honest I didn't even measure the PB or milk. So it's very flexible.
The Nutella cheesecake filling can be found here.
5 comments:
You could try adding a little cocoa powder to the nutella, and maybe some chopped hazelnuts, with shaved dark chocolate over the top. Then it would be sort of like baci.
http://www.amazon.com/Perugina-Italian-Chocolate-Christmas-Thanksgiving/dp/B001GE00X6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322959860&sr=8-2
So glad to hear that even you sometimes have challenges in the kitchen :) It makes all the rest of us feel better. The PB pie looks incredible!
My husband is a peanut butter nut. He would love this! Thank you! I would love it if you would link up to my Frugal Christmas Week (http://the-north-forty.com/2011/12/04/frugal-christmas-week-link-up/) so my readers can check this out as well! Thanks!
I'm so sad I don't like in Utah at this moment. Almost. HAHA
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