We had friends coming over for a Friday night dinner, and I needed a meal I could prep in advance 100%. So, with grilling in mind, I had marinated chicken, watermelon chopped veggies in a ziploc and corn at the ready for the main meal. I forgot about dessert until it was too late—I no longer had time in the morning to bake and cool something. Luckily, I had all the ingredients I needed to prep a peanut butter pie recipe I’d clipped from Shape or Self magazine before the turn of the century. It had been almost as long since I’d made it last.
It was one of their “make-over this recipe” articles where they take something delicious and make it mediocre but edible. My trick with this recipe was to return some of the fat, so it’s still yummy. It worked! Overheard at the kids table:
Spitfire: I’m not sure about the cream cheese taste.
Friend: I love the cream cheese taste!
Spitfire: Yeah, I like the peanut butter and the crust.
Friend: I love the crust!
Spitfire: This is a weird dessert.
Friend: It is weird.
I’ll take weird. As the Spitfire says, everyone is weird in their own way. The crust, FYI, is not the one from the recipe. I have never made a crumbled crust because I am perfectly happy to buy one. I used the same OREO crust as in our birthday ice cream cakes. This caused my children to believe it was an ice cream cake at first, but they managed to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and eat the pie.
You can scale the fat up or down in this version. Maybe it all depends on how much you think you deserve that peanut butter pie.
Peanut Butter Fudge Pie
Great for: prep-ahead casual dinners with company
Prep: 15 minutes
Chill: 4 hours
INGREDIENTS
1 Chocolaty crust (if you want to make it, microwave 1/2C fudge topping, 1/2C chocolate chips until partially melted. Stir until smooth, then slowly add 2C crispy rice cereal until mixed. Using wax paper, press into 9-inch pie pan)
8-oz package light cream cheese (in this ingredient, don’t go fat free. Fat free cream cheese is the work of the devil).
2/3C peanut butter (I prefer creamy) at room temp
14-oz can condensed, sweetened, fat-free milk
3T lemon juice (I use bottled)
1t vanilla extract
1C light cool whip (or similar), thawed
Fudge topping
DIRECTIONS
- Beat cream cheese in a bowl until fluffy
- Mix in peanut butter.
- Gradually beat in condensed milk.
- Add lemon Juice and Vanilla.
- Fold in whipped topping.
- Turn into prepared crust.
- Drizzle toping over pie. Use top of knife to swirl topping decoratively.
- Refrigerate 4 hours or until set.
Cook a Little, Talk a Little 