This pie has all the delight of a peanut butter cup, but whipped up into a sweet and salty, extra flouffy pie. I added a salty pretzel crust and a layer of salty caramel hiding out underneath the peanut butter fluff. It’s totally optional, but I like to add a tiny bit of extra flaky salt between the layers.
This peanut butter pie has a pretzel and graham crumb crust, with a thin layer of chocolate ganache, a layer of salty, gooey caramel and a big fluffy mound of peanut butter floof. Topped with a big swoosh of whipping cream and a little flutter of chocolate shavings.
This might seem a little involved, with a number of elements to prepare. But each of them is really simple and fast and it totally pays off. I mean, you could make this without caramel, or ganache...if you want to. But I think all the layers are a delightful surprise underneath the delicious mountain of peanut butter flouff.
When I was looking at inspiration recipes for this pie, I saw in a few places that you shouldn’t use peanut butter without stabilizers, that it would cause the peanut butter filling to separate. But I really wanted to use unsweetened ‘natural’ peanut butter - both because I didn’t want to add extra sweetness and because I buy the ‘natural’ kind normally and I didn’t want to buy a whole separate peanut butter just for this and use half a jar and then what? So I tried this with the unstabilized peanut butter and it works perfectly! When I first stared whipping up the filling, it looked like things might be a bit greasy and separate-y. But I kept whipping, and when I added the whipped cream everything came together like a dream. No separation and dreamy, fluffy peanut butter flouff. So go ahead and choose whatever peanut butter you like.
pretzel crust
1 ½ cups crushed pretzels (the amount you need to crush will depend on the shape and style of pretzels you use. Start with two cups uncrushed pretzels and add more until you get two cups of pretzel rubble)
1 cup graham crumbs
2 tbs brown sugar
6 tbs melted butter
Combine everything together in a bowl; stir until all dry ingredients are evenly coated in butter. Press mix into the bottom and sides of a 9” pie plate firmly. Bake at 350 until very toasty-fragrant, 10-15 minutes.
chocolate ganache
1 cup chocolate
½ cup whipping cream
In a double boiler (or a stainless-steel bowl set over a pan with a little water), melt chocolate and cream together over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. When completely combined set aside to cool slightly - don’t let it fully set. Pour into the prepared crust. Place in the fridge to let chocolate set.
salty caramel
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tbs salted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup heavy cream
1-2 teaspoons salt
Melt sugar in a pan over medium heat, stirring until fully dissolved. Continue stirring constantly until sugar is deep gold. Add butter and stir until incorporated into sugar. Off the heat, still stirring, add cream in a slow stream. Sugar will bubble up. Continue cooking for one minute and then remove from heat. Allow to cool slightly, then pour into pie crust over chocolate. Put the pie in the fridge.
The caramel can be made in advance and stored in the fridge. If you chill or freeze the caramel, warm it up in the microwave to a pourable consistency - not too hot to avoid excessively melting the chocolate.
flouffy peanut butter mousse
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup powdered sugar plus 2 tablespoons
1 cup peanut butter, creamy or crunchy
1 cup whipping cream (plus about a cup more for topping if you like)
2 tsp vanilla extract
Mix cream cheese, peanut butter and ¾ cup powdered sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in a large mixing bowl using an electric mixer). Mix until everything is well combined and fluffy.
In another bowl (it’s really handy to have two stand mixer bowls for this. If you don’t have a spare one, transfer peanut butter mix into a new bowl, clean and dry your bowl and use that). Beat the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Add 2 tbs powdered sugar and continue mixing until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold whipping cream into peanut butter mixture until just evenly combined. Spread peanut butter fluff over the prepared pie crust.
Chill thoroughly before serving, at least 3 hours.
If you like, whip up an extra cup of cream with a couple tablespoons of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mound up the whipped cream over the pie and shave a little chocolate overtop with a rasp.
