Baking Week #3

Usually when I decide to bake, it’s because I’ve been browsing the internet and have stumbled across one too many yummy looking recipes. On March 14, the internet informed me that it was Pi Day. I wasn’t actually planning on baking a pie, but I couldn’t get pies out of my head and came up with the perfect pie to make: peanut butter, chocolate and banana pie. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up not being able to get to the grocery store to get the necessary ingredients. Looks like my Pi Day pie would have to wait. Tuesday of that week, I ended up getting off work unusually early (2:30pm). I took full advantage of the opportunity and made myself a pie!

Peanut Butter, Chocolate and Banana Pie
I read a couple of recipes online for this, but since it is such an easy recipe, I never wrote one down. Listed below is what went into my pie, with my notes in Italic. This is a no bake pie. I only count this as baking because I baked the pie crust.

(Printable Recipe)

For the crust:
22 Graham crackers
1/4 cup sugar (I forgot to add the sugar, but it didn’t make a difference.)
1/4 melted butter
Preheat oven to 350F.
1. Crush graham crackers (use blender, food processor or put them in a bag and smash).
2. Mix in butter and sugar. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a pie plate. Bake for 7-9 minutes. Cool before filling.
Side note: I compared prices for premade graham cracker crust and graham crackers. It’s definitely much cheaper to just make the crust yourself, not to mention it’s pretty easy.

Filling:
1/4 cup peanut butter (I used crunchy PB. Stephen and I are big PB lovers, so next time I’ll bump it up to at least 3/4 cup)
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1 3.9 oz box instant chocolate pudding and pie filling
1 3/4 cup milk
2 bananas
2 tbsp peanut butter

1. Mix together pudding and milk for one minute, set aside.
2. Melt peanut butter and chocolate chip in microwave, in 30 second intervals. Pour over pie shell. Cool and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
3. Slice bananas and layer on bottom of pie shell (atop the PB and chocolate chip layer.)

4. Pour pudding over top, smooth out and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, until set.
5. Melt the remaining peanut butter, and drizzle on top of the pie just before serving.
(I started off trying to make the drizzles pretty, but then I decided to forget that and pile on lots of PB!)

Stephen and I devoured this pie much quicker than I’d like to admit to! This will definitely be a repeat performance.