Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Pie: Part II Tokyo Drift

This chocolate peanut butter ice cream-heaven-you-could-eat-it-every-day pie might be the best pie you ever make. (this is my best bill mays impression) On terms of ease, this is on par with just about everything else I bake. On terms of taste? This is ridiculously good. Too good. I mean come on, it's a pie! Pies are for Thanksgiving, and dinners with extended family members. But this pie, whoa. This recipe rivals only the chocolate dump cake in terms of how easy it is to make vs. how good it tastes.

Before we get started, I have to make some confessions. I didn't have time to make the crust myself, so I bought a chocolate pie crust. I didn't think that I may have to scale the amount of ice cream back a little, and as a result I got a chocolately stream that ran down my counter, and into my dog's crate. He liked it though, he was so excited he looked like this:

Okay, we were both excited.

If you decide to go the same route, you definitely don't need the full 2 cups of chocolate ice cream. I was following the recipe and everything was going well until it was time to put the second layer of vanilla/peanut butter ice cream in. That was when I had created an overflow of chocolate ice cream and needless to say, there are no photos of that.

I also had a lot of left over vanilla/peanut butter ice cream filling, so you could afford to scale back on that as well. I imagine the left overs would make for a pretty sweet milkshake, but I didn't have the time or the energy to figure out how to create a machine to make a milkshake. Especially after my experience with the homemade double boiler.

So here's the recipe for your family's new favorite pie: 
According to the recipe:
Prep time: 35 minutes
Baking time: 6 minutes
Total time: 41 minutes  (that's some great math, but don't forget you need to freeze it for 6 HOURS)

Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups of chocolate cookie crumbs
- 2 tbsp. finely chopped nuts
- 1/3 cup melted butter
- 2 cups chocolate ice cream (or a little less if you don't make the crust yourself)
- 4 cups vanilla ice cream (again, less if you're using a store bought crust)
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1/4 cup of chopped nuts

Preparation:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If you're making your own crust, mix the cookie crumbs, the 2 tbsp. of finely chopped nuts and melted butter and mix well. Press into the bottom and up the sides of your 9 inch pie pan. Bake at 350 for 5-6 minutes until set. Then cool. If you're not making your own crust, skip ahead!

This is how I cheated.

- If your crust already came assembled, spread the soft chocolate ice cream in the bottom of the crust. Freeze for 30 minutes.

You can (and I should have) clearly seen here that I had too much
chocolate ice cream, but how is that ever a problem?

- While the chocolate ice cream is getting hard in the freezer, mix the vanilla ice cream and peanut butter and beat until thoroughly blended. It's best to have all of the ice cream sitting out to get soft before you begin. When blended, spread over the chocolate ice cream and top with remaining peanuts. Cover and freeze for at least 6 hours. Before you serve, let it sit for about 10 minutes or just 2 if it's 100 degrees outside.

This was the next day. I had to reinforce the pie crust with a Pyrex dish to make sure it wouldn't collapse. This was a solid ice cream pie. I added the swirls on the top to make it look more appetizing. I'm still not positive that worked.

- Pie serves 8-10 or one Kevin.

This is clearly not your mom's apple pie. Or anyone else's for that matter.

There's no apples in it.

This pie can't come with enough recommendations, you just have to try it. I can assure you that it won't disappoint. And if it does, let me know and I'll stop making such strong assurances.

Also, here's a quick shot of my peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate butter cream krispie icing:

But that's a recipe for a different day my friend!



Source: About.com 'Busy Cooks'
http://busycooks.about.com/od/dessertrecipes/r/chocpbicepie.htm
Posted by: Linda Larsen

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Pie

This is a quick post because I'm actually supposed to be making dinner and not perusing the internet for potential recipes. If you've noticed any sort of pattern in this blog so far, it's definitely peanut butter. Well, and sarcasm. Almost every recipe I post has something to do with peanut butter because it's easily the most coveted ingredient of any dish I make, take somewhere, or bookmark to make later.

I found this recipe today when I was looking for something easy, (and oven-less) to make. In my estimation, there's nothing you could possibly do to mess this up. It seems like a perfect recipe. As true as that may be, I haven't tried it yet.

This recipe is for chocolate peanut butter ice cream pie. It sounds amazing just typing it!
Here's the link: http://busycooks.about.com/od/dessertrecipes/r/chocpbicepie.htm

I haven't made it yet, but I will when I get an excuse to. So it's fair to say that yeah, I would bake that. I would bake the hell out of this pie.

Leave me some comments if you try it and let me know how it goes.

p.s. I already have the title ready for this blog's sequel, so it better be good!


Source: About.com 'Busy Cooks'
http://busycooks.about.com/od/dessertrecipes/r/chocpbicepie.htm
Posted by: Linda Larsen

Rice Krispie Pops

I have to admit that lately I've been struggling. Aside from the fact that 5 projects need to all be finished at once, I haven't been able to decide which recipe to post next. Being that it's summer, and 900 degrees in Philly, my options are clearly limited. The problem with summer in this house is that our landlord still thinks it's 1970, so my gas powered oven could literally (and has on occasion) heat the entire house. This makes baking difficult. Ask Bill McNamee, he walked into the kitchen the other day when I was mid-white chocolate raspberry cupcakes and he almost hyperventilated. That thing's like a furnace. It'll give you a sun tan.

So in order to avoid third degree burns on both my body and the baked goods, I decided I'd look for something you can make fast, and preferably not in the oven. The result was these fancy rice krispie pops. The best part about finding this recipe is that the post where I found it was also talking about the ridiculously warm weather. Sweaty people must think alike.

There's nothing like a good background to make your picture look better.
Those paper towel rolls were not involved in the making of this recipe.

I need to tell you up front that rice krispie treats to me are like muddy buddies to my mother. When we were growing up my Aunt Karen would make them for special occasions, and they always came out just the right shade of white. When my mom made them, they always came out...well, muddier. They tasted exactly the same, but we had fun ragging on mom and reminding her that Aunt Karen's always looked just like the box, and mom's always looked more like they were actually made with mud.

Rice krispie treats are delicate. You have to really pay attention, and not burn anything. Which is tough. The last few batches I've made have either been too dry, too krispie, too not-marshmellowy enough or on one occasion, a clear substitute for a door jam. But this time, I happened to get them just right. While the recipe I'm about to give you tells you to make them as pops, I went without the sticks. I dipped them in chocolate that's not appropriate for dipping because it doesn't dry (I would suggest the dipping chocolate they normally sell near strawberries at the grocery store, or the chocolate disks you can melt specifically for dipping and baking) and sprinkled them with rainbow sprinkles.

I would highly suggest these if you need something quick and if your kitchen gets as warm as mine.

Here's the link: http://kitchenkarate.blogspot.com/2010/07/unholy-heat-and-rice-krispie-pops.html

The author of Kitchen Karate (which is a pretty bad ass name for baking/cooking blog) isn't sure where he found the recipe, but if I were you I'd spend some time digging around his site. He also had a recipe for peanut butter cupcakes with krispie buttercream icing which I'm looking forward to making. If nothing else, this guy appreciates a good krispie recipe when he finds one.

Here's some pictures of my rice krispie non-pops:

Before the chocolate. You can see that I tried to use popsicle sticks as lollipop sticks.
I would't suggest that. It didn't work.

I melted the chocolate on this homemade double boiler.
The last 6 searches on my computer are:
 "how to make a double boiler"
"how to not burn yourself using a homemade double boiler"
and probably the best one:
"how can i take back this questionable decision i made to make a homemade double boiler?"

In reality, that double boiler method works extremely well. I've used it a few times now, and as long as you're careful with the steam, you'll be fine.

A close up of the end results.

If you have any other warm weather baking suggestions, send them my way! I've got a few recipes on deck, including the aforementioned white chocolate raspberry cupcakes I've made and the peanut butter cupcakes with krispie buttercream icing, but I welcome anything that's not going to make my kitchen into the fifth circle of hell.


Source: Kitchen Karate
"Unholy Heat and Rice Krispie Pops"
http://kitchenkarate.blogspot.com/2010/07/unholy-heat-and-rice-krispie-pops.html