I love peanut butter. Growing up my mom would occasionally make Frozen Peanut Butter Pie. Not healthy.
Basically it was a pie that contained refined sugar, cream cheese (which isn’t too bad… but it’s not from healthy grass fed cows or goats), refined sugar, whipped topping, peanut butter (not the two ingredient kind, if you know what I mean), and refined brown sugar.
Recently my mom asked me to make this pie to take to my grandparent’s house- actually she asked Naomi to make it and I volunteered to make a healthy version instead.
So here’s the challenge- How do you make a healthy peanut butter pie? Even if I used our home made peanut butter and replaced the refined sugar with (slightly) less refined sugar it would still be full of refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup (from the whipped topping) and enough calories to feed an army.
After some brain storming and recipe book searching, I turned to the resource I always turn to when I just can’t do it
on my own…google.
Googling “healthy peanut butter pie recipe” brought up an abundance of “healthy” peanut butter pie recipes… Not healthy… I don’t know exactly what’s in low-fat peanut butter but I bet it isn’t any healthier than sugar-free whipped topping or fat-free cream cheese.
My second search (“healthy frozen peanut butter pie whole food”) brought up exactly what I was looking for. Five results down the page was a link to Chocolatecoveredkatie’s blog and a recipe for “No-bake Peanut Butter Pie”.
I skimmed the recipe ingredients and felt confident that this pie would definitely be healthier that the one I ate growing up. Bananas, peanut butter, vanilla, salt, coconut oil and only a small amount of honey (or stevia)-enough calories to feed half an army but it is all whole foods that weren’t made in a factory! And a crust recipe that didn’t require store bought graham crackers? *bonus* :)
So, now you might be wondering, did it taste good? Was it as good as your mom’s pie?
The answer is more complicated than you may think. I thought it was one of the best desserts I’ve ever tried, but I also prefer a healthy dessert to a non-healthy one. If you usually like whole food desserts better than their highly refined alternatives then you will probably love this recipe. But if you always prefer store bought ice cream to banana ice cream then you will probably find this recipe less than satisfying to your sweet tooth.
Chocolate Covered Katie has become my all time favorite dessert blog. Check out the Peanut Butter Pie Recipe by clicking this link- Chocolatecoveredkatie
Have fun!
Bethany
p.s. I made this for Shabbat tonight and it was very tasty! Minus the peanuts I threw in for crunch, they weren't such a big hit :p
"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."