Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie and Pi(e) Day!

The first time I celebrated Pi(e) Day was as a sophomore at Berkeley in a hippie co-op full of math magicians and culinary geniuses—all pie, all day, and for some of the following day too. It was the most supreme and comforting display of nerdery, revived again in my recent life at the hands of DC's resident pie enthusiast. Every year—from her previous homes to here—Emily organizes a Pi(e) Day event, and the one she put together yesterday was a smorgasbord of sweet and savory, all heralding math, pie, and a fantastic local farm and education center that benefited from the cover cost. And boy was it ever delicious.

Spaghetti pie, chocolate hazelnut tarts, salty caramel chocolate pie, hot 'n' spicy chili pie, butterscotch meringue: I arrived totally starving and left completely wired and with a head full of ideas for new recipes and collaborations. The gals from The Runcible Spoon were there sharing a sweet craft and their latest beautiful zine (breakfast themed!), and Emily and Elizabeth's lovely pie book had a li'l cameo too. Most of my conversations with strangers ended up being about people's personal pursuits, and it was so nice to spend one of these last few days in DC hearing about—and eating!—all the creative projects that folks are working on. 

I ended up bringing four offerings to the event, three tried-and-true classics and one new recipe: labneh tart with sesame brittle, Floriole's chocolate ganache meringue tart, super tangy lemon tart, and this big ol' beastly peanut butter honeycomb pie. I only had the chance to run a piece of honeycomb through the smears of filling and crust left on the pie plate, but that was enough to know that I'll definitely be making this again. Creamy and rich, this pie hails from one of my very favorite pastry chefs who has never done me wrong. Kim Boyce knows what's up, and this ode to insanity brings out the very best in sweet, salty, crunchy, and creamy contrasts. Just don't wait until Pi(e) Day next year to make it. And, of course, a big thanks goes out to all the people who worked so hard to make DC's Pi(e) Day such a stellar and inspiring event—y'all keep this city alive!

Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie

Adapted from Kim Boyce for Bon Appétit

I only made a few tweaks to this: upped the nutmeg, swapped the powdered sugar for cornstarch because I was concerned about it setting, omitted the salted peanuts she calls for in the end. It was a big hit at Pi(e) Day and not nearly as annoying to make as it seems! You need to allot two or three hours to set the custard, but all the individual pieces come together in about a half hour or so.

Crust
9 full-size graham crackers, broken up
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (bumped this up to 1/4 teaspoon)
6 tablespoons butter, melted 

Filling
8 large egg yolks
12 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup creamy peanut butter (natural is fine!)
1 teaspoon cornstarch, sifted
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt

Honeycomb
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons corn syrup
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon baking soda, sifted
 
Chocolate Glaze
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate (do not exceed 61% cacao), chopped
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1. Make the crust:  Preheat oven to 325. Finely grind graham crackers, sugar, salt, and nutmeg in a food processor.Transfer crumb mixture to a medium bowl. Add butter and stir to blend. Use bottom and sides of a measuring cup to pack crumbs onto bottom and up sides of 9-inch pie pan. Bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Let cool.

2.  Make the filling: Mix yolks and six tablespoons of sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (or you can use a handheld mixer). Beat at high speed until ribbons form, stopping once to scrape down sides of bowl, about two minutes.

3.  Combine milk and remaining six tablespoons sugar in a large saucepan; scrape in seeds from vanilla bean and add bean to pan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Remove bean. With mixer running, gradually add hot milk mixture to yolk mixture. Scrape mixture back into pan. Clean bowl. Whisking constantly, bring custard to a boil over medium heat. Remove pan from heat and whisk vigorously for one minute. Return custard to mixing bowl and beat on high speed until cool, about four minutes. Mix in butter, one tablespoon at a time. Add peanut butter, cornstarch, and salt; beat to blend. Scrape filling into cooled crust; smooth top. Chill until set, two to three hours.

4.  Make honeycomb: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil. Combine sugar, corn syrup, honey, and 1/4 cup water in a heavy, deep saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Once boiling, cook without stirring, occasionally swirling pan and brushing down sides with a wet pastry brush, until sugar turns pale amber, about seven or eight minutes. Working quickly, remove pan from heat and add baking soda (mixture will foam up dramatically), and whisk quickly just to combine. Immediately pour candy over prepared sheet (do not spread out). Let stand undisturbed until cool, about 20 minutes. Hit candy in several places with the handle of a knife to crack into pieces

5.  Make glaze and assemble:  Once pie is set and cool, stir chocolate and butter in a small heat-proof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water until melted and smooth. Drizzle some of the chocolate glaze over the peanut butter filling, then pile pieces of honeycomb on top, then drizzle remaining chocolate glaze over the honeycomb. This pie is a beast to cut with the honeycomb on top, so if you’re worried about slice presentation, just drizzle the chocolate on the pie, and top each slice with honeycomb and more chocolate. Finally, I only used about half the honeycomb. The rest we are dipping in chocolate and snackin’ on!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Oreo Birthday Cake

There is a frozen yogurt shop in Pittsburgh called Oh Yeah!—possibly the most genius name because it’s a phrase uttered all the dang time—which Joey and I visited with my sister about two years ago. There are something like 150 different mix-ins and maybe ten or so basic yogurt flavors to choose from, after which your choices are shoved into a machine that crunches everything together and swirls it out into a cone. Katie and I took about two minutes each to determine flavor combinations, ordered, paid, and were eating before realizing that Joey was still poring over his selection sheet. Naturally we made fun of him, then watched on incredulously as he ordered the fully most inspired combination of mix-ins that put our puny fig-honey-coffee combos to shame. His cake batter yogurt included pretzels, coffee grounds, and caramel, along with few other things that I can’t recall, and so I wasn’t at all surprised when he said to me last week that he wanted a “Joey cake." I totally get what that means. 

Inside party shot! Still learning essential camera functions, such as focus.

Making birthday cakes for friends is the best, and birthday cake for a boo is an especially fun thing to be able to give, particularly when said boo is into ridiculous desserts. Dude loves a little salty with his sweet (in love and in desserts—har har). Originally I was planning to riff a Mississippi mud pie, but I realized that it was not crazy enough—obviously—and why on earth didn’t I think of making a chocolate peanut butter caramel pretzel cake until just this very second!? This here Oreo cake is probably tame compared to the ideal birthday cake of Joey’s dreams, but for the rest of us, it’s a totally worthwhile celebration cake, with towering super chocolatey layers and truly the taste of Oreos; it's like dirt cake, but bigger and better. It proved just the ticket for Joey's happy birthday, and thus begins the planning for his next personalized cake monstrosity.

Happy birthday to the best dude on the planet (left) with best brother on the planet (right)!

Chocolate Cake Layers + Assembly

This is my favorite chocolate cake recipe! It hails from the Internet (possibly originated on All Recipes) and reminds me of Bruce Bogtrotter. It will yield three nine-inch layers, as seen here, or two fatty ten-inch layers, with adjusted baking time.

3 ounces good semisweet chocolate
1 ½ cups hot brewed coffee
3 cups granulated sugar
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutched)
2 teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 ¼ teaspoons fine-grain sea salt
3 large eggs
¾ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ cups shaken buttermilk
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 15.5 ounce box of Oreos, for assembly

1.  Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Butter three nine-inch pans. Line bottoms with rounds of parchment paper and butter the paper.

2.  Finely chop chocolate and combine with hot coffee in a bowl. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

3.  Into a large bowl, sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl and using a hand-mixer, beat eggs on medium until thickened slightly and lemon colored, about three minutes with the stand mixer, or five with the hand mixer. Slowly add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well. Add sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.

4.  Divide batter evenly between pans and bake in middle of oven until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 45 minutes to one hour. As usual, start checking your layers around the 30-minute mark. If your oven is like mine, it’s impossible to have all three layers finished baking at the same time, so better to make sure that none will overbake.

5.  Cool layers in pans on rack for an hour, or until mostly cool. Invert layers onto rack, carefully remove parchment paper, reinvert, and let cool completely. Cake layers can be wrapped in plastic and left at room temperature for a day, or wrapped in triple plastic and frozen for a few days before frosting.

6.  To assemble, crush two-thirds of the pack of Oreos. I did this by putting them in a paper lunch bag and smooshing them with a rolling pin. Set aside. Put your first cake layer right-side-up on a plate or cakestand. Tuck strips of wax paper underneath the edges to protect plate from frosting. Spread two-thirds cup of frosting (recipe below) on top of this layer, then cover with about half your smashed Oreos, leaving a half-inch border all the way around. Cover with second layer, two-thirds cup more frosting, and remaining smashed Oreos. Top with third layer.

7.  Get yr crumb coat on! Put about two cups of frosting in a separate bowl (to keep the main bowl free of crumbs) and coat the cake completely, on all sides and on top, in a thin layer of frosting. Use more frosting if necessary. Put the cake in the fridge for 20 minutes to let the crumb coat set. Using an offset spatula, swathe cake in the rest of the frosting, making as smooth a layer as possible. Set frosted cake in fridge to cool for about an hour. Make chocolate glaze (recipe below) when you’re ready to proceed.

8.  Pour chocolate glaze onto the top of the cake, and use an offset spatula to push it to the edges. It should flow down on its own, but it’s okay to give it a nudge with your spatula. I used about ten smashed Oreos to make a ring around the edge of the cake, but you can use more or less or none as your taste determines. Put cake back in fridge to let glaze set for about 30 minutes, and remove about an hour before serving.

Vanilla Buttercream
Adapted from Martha Stewart

1 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 pounds powdered sugar, sifted
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ - ½ cup milk, at room temperature
Big pinch fine-grain sea salt

1.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment or in a very large bowl with a hand-mixer, cream the butter until it’s an even, smooth consistency. Gradually add in the sugar, a cup or two at a time, and beat on medium until frosting is light and fluffy, about three minutes. Add the salt and vanilla. Slowly stream in the milk until frosting is smooth and spreadable--you likely won’t need all of the milk.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Do not make this glaze until you have cooled the frosted the cake!

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
4 Tablespoons smooth peanut butter
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
½ cup half-and-half

1. In a heat-safe bowl set over simmering water, combine the chocolate, peanut butter, and corn syrup. Cook, whisking often, until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and whisk in the half-and-half, beating until smooth. Use while still warm and flowy. If you let it sit for too long, rewarm in the microwave in ten-second bursts.

Cake guts.

Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie

Topped with halved dark chocolate malt balls.

Between the ages of 12 and 14, I was obsessed with the banana cream pie recipe from The Joy of Cooking. My dad loved it too, which made it easy to find an excuse to make the pie whenever my mom the flight attendant was working. Little more than sliced bananas between layers of whipped cream and chocolate shavings, the pie would hold up in the fridge for about a day before the filling turned slimy and gray and became something that only my dad had the stomach to stomach. While I know that I totally loved banana cream pie, it has grossed me out in recent years since the day-old refrigerated alien mush is much more present in my mind than the fluffy banana layers that beget the mush. Now fast-forward to this year's Kickasserole feast where I ignored my slimy misgivings and revisited the banana cream pie printed in Baked Explorations. This recipe uses pudding instead of whipped cream, and the pie is topped with a peanut butter layer that makes for a sturdier update on the bare bones banana pie of my youth. In short, this recipe is awesome. It would last longer than a day in the fridge, but won't last longer than an hour on your dinner table since it's super good, so I say hop to it and see if you can squeeze this one into your Thanksgiving repertoire.

And a merry Thanksgiving to y'all! Thanks so much for supporting this blog!

Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie

Barely adapted from Baked Explorations

This pie is seriously easy, but it takes a while to make because of the refrigeration steps. It's a good one to start in the morning and then forget about while you work on other dishes. Also awesome is that the only part that needs baking is the crust. I didn't add any bourbon to the pudding, but I was seriously tempted to; let us know if you customize!

For the crust

6 oz. vanilla cookies (a good time to remember that Nilla wafers taste exactly like marshmallows)

6 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into half-inch cubes

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Put all of the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor, and blend until mixture looks like moist crumbs, about one minute. Transfer to a nine-inch glass (glass!) pie plate, and press the crust to the bottom and up the sides until it's even with the rim and even thickness throughout. I do this step by pressing a floured metal measuring cup on the bottom and up the sides, and using the thumb of my other hand to tamp down a rim.  Bake crust until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes; if the crust has puffed, push it down with a metal spoon. Allow to cool completely. 

For the puddin' layer

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup whole milk

2 large egg yolks

1 vanilla bean split lengthwise

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

3 firm, but ripe bananas

2 tablespoons orange juice

1. In a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk the sugar, cornstach, and salt. Slowly add the whipping cream, then the milk, whisking the whole time to prevent lumps. Add yolks, and using a small pointed knife or a quarter teaspoon, scrape the vanilla seeds into the mixture. Drop the pod in too. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until pudding thickens and boils, about five minutes. Remove from heat and add butter, whisking vigorously for about two minutes to release excess heat. Spread pudding in cooled crust, and chill until filling is cool, about one hour.

2.  Thinly slice bananas on the diagonal and, in a small bowl, gently mix them with the OJ (this prevents them from turning brown). Blot the excess OJ off the bananas with a paper towel, and arrange the slices in a single layer across the top; make sure to cover completely. Proceed with PB layer.

For the peanut butter topping

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter (not old-fashioned or freshly ground; I used Whole Foods 365 brand)

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream, chilled

Malt balls, chocolate-covered peanuts, chocolate shavings, or any decorative goodness of your choosing

1.  In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese and powdered sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in the vanilla, then peanut butter, mixing until the color is uniform and the mixture is slightly fluffed, about one minute. 

2.  In a separate glass bowl, beat the whipping cream on medium-high until soft peaks form (not stiff peaks please). Here the directions said to add the whipped cream to the PB mixture in large spoonfulls and fold it in with a rubber spatula. This didn't work well for me though, so I ended up using my electric mixer for about 30 seconds, until the topping was smooth and uniform in color. 

3.  Spread the peanut butter topping evenly across the pie. Adorn with chocolate topping of your choice; I went with dark chocolate malt balls sliced in half. Chill pie for at least three hours, and up to eight.