Peanut Butter Pie Recipe
Here's
my american recipe, at the end I'll tell you how I modified it to do
it here in Lyon. I used www.onlineconversion.com
to do the conversions. If you have the american measurements though
suggest you use those instead, since volume to weight conversions are
not an exact science when you don't know the exact mass of what
you're converting.
Chocolate
Cookie Crumb Crust
2
Cups cookie crumbs 50cl
¼
Cup sugar 50g
½
Cup butter, melted 113g
Blend
cookie crumbs and sugar.
Add
melted butter, stir.
Press
into pie mold, refrigerate while preparing the filling.
Peanut
Butter Filling
1
Cup peanut butter 258g
1 “8 ounce” brick cream cheese 226g
1
Cup sugar 200g
1
Tbsp vanilla 1 cuillère à soupe
2
Tbsp butter (optional) 28g
Blend
together well, then add
1
“8 ounce” container of cool whip 226g or 90cl
Pour
into crust and refrigerate over night.
Add chocolate shavings if you wish.
Serve
cold, or it will not be firm enough to cut. For my last potluck I put it in the freezer
overnight, so it would still be
cold come desert time.
OK.....
So
there are four main ingredient issues for making this recipe here
in Lyon: the cream cheese, the peanut butter, the cool whip, and the
cookie crumbs.
For
the Cream cheese, if you don't use Philadelphia, or don't want to pay
an arm and a leg for it, there are three french equivalents for cream
cheese: the brand name St. Môret,
or the generic, “Fromage
à tartiner”,
and now there is also the “Elle et Vire” brand version of cream
cheese called “fromage
crème”.
I usually get the generic. You have to be a little careful since
some of the generics can be a little less consistent than
Philadelphia cream cheese. I used a DIA generic brand this year and
it turned out fine, just make sure you drain off all the extra
liquid. It was 300g for less than 2 euros.
For
the Peanut
butter...
Lots of places have peanut butter, the only thing is that it is
expensive. I like to get my peanut butter from Paris Store, a huge
asian supermarket in Vénissieux
of all things, the PSP brand Pâte d'Arachide, creamy peanut butter.
It's the best deal on peanut butter. It tastes just as good as a
brand name peanut butter but costs less than 4 euros for 510g.
Usually it costs almost 5 euros for one of those 340g Skippy jars.
For
the Cool
whip...
I've never seen cool whip here, but that's okay with me since I'd
rather make my own whip cream anyway. In the US, you just pick up the
little carton that says whipping cream, get it really cold, add some
powdered sugar if you'd like, and beat it with the beaters until it's
whipped, and voila! Only problem is that it doesn't work with the
liquid creams you can get here, due to the lower fat content. Heavy
whipping cream has 38% fat content, whipping cream has 35%. Crème
liquide
here, that says its for crème
chantilly,
or crème
fouettée,
is only 30% and it won't make a whipped cream that stands up enough
not to turn your cream pie totally soupy. I've seen some that are 32%, and get excited, but that still doesn't work. They also have a thing
called “fixe
chantilly”
(whipped cream stabilizer), that doesn't work either! So I have
finally broken down and just get a can of whipped topping. If you
can find one with the fat content on the can you'll see that it has a
higher fat content. (Darn them! Where did they get that?) To be
honest, I don't measure it out, I just eyed it to look like about the right amount.
For
the Cookie
crumb crust… I use to use “Palets bretons, pur beurre-au chocolat”, from DIA. They
come with 8 cookies in a package and it took me about two and a half
packages. I found that I was able to crumble these cookies with my
fingers, and that made it really easy. However, these handy little
cookies use to cost only 0,77€ three years ago and now they're
2,88€. Since I could think of any possible justification for a 275% price increase, and I hate getting ripped off, this year I just got the cheapest entirely chocolate
cookie I could find and blended them in the food processor. They
were called “American Cookie”. (So not american, but oh well.) I
used two packages and had a little to spare.
by Dori, 24 November 2014
