My Ultimate Peanut Butter Pie! A luscious, creamy peanut butter filling nestles on top of a rich, unique peanut butter ganache, all cradled in a peanut butter cookie crust. Peanut Butter heaven!

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Every spring – as the baking, burning, scorching heat of summer approaches – I go through all of my recipes for chilled pie.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love hot pastry pie.

A good, thick pastry pie (maybe with a delicious baked fruit filling) is absolutely perfect for chilly evenings.

In my book, fall and winter are hot pie season. But a chilled, creamy pie is the perfect dish to whip up on a long, hot summer day. This recipe for peanut butter pie is one of my favorite pies in my whole recipe box.

And it’s served chilled – which means its time is once again here!

This recipe has so many great features. I’ll do my best to give you some of them here, but I’m sure you’ll discover your own reasons to love the recipe after you try it.

This awesome recipe has a bit of a cheesecake flair – especially when served with Cool Whip. And, though no bake peanut butter pie with Cool Whip sounds spectacular, make sure to serve smaller slices. The pie is very rich, so just a little bit will go a long way.

That’s a really nice thing when you’re serving large crowds. And if the cool whip isn’t your thing, don’t worry! This peanut butter pie without cool whip is just as good!

The flavor combination found in each succulent bite of this recipe is absolutely fantastic. It’s sweet with just a little bit of light, salty flavor – very similar to an Amish peanut butter pie recipe.

However, this recipe isn’t just delicious, it’s also very easy to make. Which the famous Amish recipe really isn’t.

Perhaps its best feature is the peanut butter cookie crust – it’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted in a peanut butter pie. As soon as I tasted this unique pie crust, I knew that I wouldn’t ever be using any other pie crust for this recipe again.

Most peanut butter pie recipes you will encounter use a graham cracker crust. You might also occasionally stumble across a chocolate crust on a peanut butter pie. But this homemade peanut butter cookie crust is so unique – and absolutely fantastic.

Before you try just a plain old graham cracker crust, or before you try a peanut butter pie with Oreo crust, give this crust recipe a try. If only just to know what you’re missing.

Alongside (or, more aptly, inside) the wonderful crust is an equally wonderful creamy filling. It isn’t just your standard cream cheese and peanut butter mixture – no, no, no.

Instead, I use a creamy peanut butter ganache layer that sits between the mousse-like peanut butter mixture and the crust.

The ganache is simply outstanding, and it brings some great personality to the pie. Again, the ganache layer is really unique in a pie of this sort. Using it will make your pie really stand out – even against other peanut butter pies.

As the summer gets closer, having some recipes that are designed to cool people down becomes crucial. This is the season of homemade ice cream, popsicles, slushies – and delicious chilled pies.

Get ready to run out of this awesome peanut butter pie.

Recipe Notes:

Crust: Your food processor is your best friend when making this recipe. Using it to ensure that the peanuts and cookies are really well processed is absolutely essential to making the perfect crust. Trying to form peanuts and cookies that haven’t been suitably processed into a crust is a difficult job. And your crust will fall apart much more easily if you have big chunks of cookie left in your crust.

Hand crushing the ingredients won’t work with this recipe. Those little peanuts are really hard – and trying to crush them down to small enough pieces without a blender is just too much work!

If you ever see something called a “chocolate peanut butter pie recipe,” that’s usually code for “uses Oreos to make the crust.” And while an Oreo crust is good, I’m a firm believer in this peanut butter cookie crust. Pioneer Woman is a great resource for recipes. But with peanut butter pie, Pioneer Woman has sort of fallen short. They use the standard Oreo crust recipe instead of trying something new!

Filling: This filling should fit nicely into your pie crust. It pours smoothly and easily and should fill up the pie consistently without a ton of work to get it perfect. If you need to, try using a spatula to make sure the top of the filling is smooth and flat. A knife would also work.

There are several recipes out there for a peanut butter pie without cream cheese. While those recipes are decent, I don’t think they achieve the right level of creaminess in the filling. Unless you have a real aversion to using cream cheese in your baking, I wouldn’t recommend trying a peanut butter pie without the essential core of the creamy filling!

Chilling: This pie must be in the fridge for a minimum of four to six hours. Taking the pie out any sooner just isn’t enough time, and the filling will be runny. Not to mention that the whole thing will be far too sweet. Those precious hours in the fridge are crucial – they help the pie to firm up. And they help the wonderful flavors to chill out (ha! Get it? Chill?) and combine into something really beautiful.

Peanut Butter: I call for creamy peanut butter in my recipe – but don’t take that as an absolute requirement. As with anything in cooking, experimenting can yield great results. Using crunchy peanut butter can be really yummy in peanut butter pie – Paula Deen has a recipe that does just that! But be aware, I’ve found that using crunchy peanut butter also makes the recipe a little saltier. Not way too salty, but noticeably saltier.

Topping: I recommend using chopped peanuts for the topping, but you might also try chocolate chips, hot fudge (if you want to try a chocolate peanut butter pie recipe), or chopped Reese’s candies.

Can’t get Enough Pie? Check these out!

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Pumpkin Pie Lasagna – This a rich, creamy EASY to make, no-bake Pie!
Coconut Banana Cream Pie – Coconut Custard, a layer of fresh bananas, and a generous topping of fresh whipped cream, cradled in a coconut macaroon style crust!!
Strawberry Pie -Delicious, Jello glaze intensifies the yummy strawberry flavor and makes an easy-to-cut pie!
Banana Cream Pie – Rich, velvety custard, lots of freshly sliced bananas, a crunchy cookie crust, topped with a mountain of fluffy whipped cream!
Sugar Cream Pie – is buttery, so velvety, and literally melts in your mouth!

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