Peanut Butter Pie

(don't judge my muffin tin, it's a hand-me-down - remember, I got kids in the divorce, not kitchen-wear:)

 Let me tell you what I love. The combination of chocolate and peanut butter, that's what. That's why when I found a recipe for peanut butter pie recently, I have hardly been able to wait until I came up with a good excuse to make it. Really, a whole pie is much too much for my kids and I too eat, and we haven't had many visitors lately so sadly it has had to wait. But finally I came up with an idea. And I owe it all to my ex mother-in-law. I know! She has recently had knee surgery, and so her ward passed around a sign up sheet for people to volunteer to take a meal to her. Well, her ward is actually my ward as well... I know! And even though I sat at the complete back of the room, there were still several spaces open by the time the list got to me. And since I am glutton for punishment, and since I was heckled by a crazy woman who was sitting next to me, I signed up to take dinner to her. I know!:) So, trying to make the best of an awkward situation I decided now was the perfect time to make the Peanut Butter Pie. But because I'm greedy, I didn't want to give away the pie without having a taste, and since it seemed a little tacky to take her a half eaten pie, I opted for individual servings. I made crust like I normally would have with 1 package of crushed chocolate grahams and 1/4 cup melted butter, but instead of putting it in a pie tin I put it in cupcake wrappers, pressing the crust against the bottom and sides of the wrapper. Then I made a simple chocolate ganache:
1/4C Milk
1T Butter
4oz semisweet choc. chips
Stir in a sauce pan over medium heat until melted and creamy. I then put a dollop (not too much, it's pretty rich) of the ganache in the bottom of each crust. While that cools (don't get worried, it thickens as it cools, but be sure it's cool before you put the peanut butter filling on top - you may even want to stick it in the fridge for a minute.) Make up the peanut butter filling:

8 oz. cream cheese

1 c. peanut butter

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

8 oz. frozen whipped topping, thawed

With an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth.  Blend in peanut butter and vanilla.  Fold in whipped topping. Then you can spoon it into the crusts and call it good, or if you want to make it fancy, and you have an extra large frosting tip you can load the filling into a pastry bag and swirl it around until the cup is full. This option is particularly nice because when all the cups are full you can squirt it, mess free, right into you mouth... not that I did or anything, I'm just sayin'... Then you refrigerate it for at least 4 hours. Trust me, it's 100 times better eaten strait out of the fridge. If you want to get fancy you can top it off with some whipped cream, chocolate sauce, or shreds of chocolate, or if you like that sweet/salty taste you can put just a touch of course salt on top... or, it's fantastic just the way it is. 

And, I did have quite a bit of filling left over, so I squirted it onto grahams and let my kids eat them, they were happy that they didn't have to wait for 4 hours for a treat, and I was happy too, because I like to be the mom that says "yes" sometimes.

So after making this recipe I've decided it's the perfect dessert. It was SO EASY! Even with making the ganache which the original recipe didn't include, and making it in individual cups, which took longer, the whole thing took about a half hour, plus I had all the ingredients except the cream cheese and cool whip on hand. And, I'm pretty sure you can't mess it up, which is pretty great too. Just be sure to grab a glass of milk to wash it down, these suckers are rich - but TOTALLY worth it!