I’m a whore for a good dessert, and lucky enough to have enough food blogger friends that inspire the hell out of me in that category. Case in point: Amanda Simpson, Queen of the food blogs What We’re Eating and Food Porn Daily. You might remember her from this post, or even this podcast. It isn’t a secret I likes me some Amanda. Ironically enough, Amanda doesn’t do dessert, but her better half does, and she created this to please his palate. The rest of the world is just damn lucky Tyler and Amanda shared their gorgeous food porn and recipe with us. Or doomed, depending on how you look at it, because once I saw a photo of her pie, I couldn’t not make it and hoard it all for myself. And maybe I stabbed my husband with a fork to keep him from eating the last slice. Maybe. Which brings to mind the question, Amanda: awesome food friend or enabler? For the details on the actual recipe, you’ll have to schlep yourself over to Amanda’s newly revamped What We’re Eating blog. Don’t bitch and moan–the link is right here. It is a kick-ass, if not rich recipe, so beware. Here are a few tips I found handy in making this recipe: *Amanda uses instant coffee to enhance the flavor of the chocolate in the brownies. You can also use fresh coffee or espresso, but since I had it on hand, I used this:
It is coffee extract, made from coffee, and worked well, especially since I am not a coffee drinker and therefore never have ANY in the house. *The recipe calls for lining the cake pan with a circle of parchment paper. I prefer using a long, wide strip of parchment that hangs over both sides of the pan when using a circle cake pan. This way, you have a little extra insurance the damn cake will leave the pan.
The recipe is pretty straightforward, but takes a while since there are several different components to this dessert. With that in mind, this recipe could totally be made over the course of several days in small increments, or over the course of a lazy football Saturday, like I did. Part one: make the brownie base. Very basic brownie recipe–melt chocolate with butter, mix in eggs and sugar, gently fold in flour. Pan and bake!
Part two: make the pb mousse: again, really simple. I used my Kitchen Aid to whip heavy cream into stiff peaks. Then I used it to beat together peanut butter, room temp cream cheese, milk, vanilla, and powdered sugar. Then I gently folded the whipped cream into the pb goo, and voila! Peanut butter mousse. The mousse was really rich, so in the future, I might cut it with a bit more cream cheese to give it tang and less sweetness.
Part Three: Assembly, which has two stages. Stage one: put the pb mousse on the cooled brownie. Then back into the freezer until mousse is solid, and I finish it off with some ganache and mini Reeses peanut butter cups, and back into the freezer to make it solid.
The pie has to be served cold or the mousse will fall, but I really liked it served frozen. The coldness helped mute some of the pie’s sweetness, making it taste more balanced. Plus, less chance for you (read: ME) to smear chocolate in a spot you won’t notice until at least three other people do. Just saying.
~LTG!
