I always thought once I started eating a plant-based diet I'd suddenly no longer want sweets or desserts. I'd be so into wholesome, good savory foods that my lifetime love of chocolates, cakes and pastries would just...disappear.
On the contrary, I think I've become a far more prolific baker and maker of sweet things since going vegan a few years ago. For starters, finding and creating good recipes feels like a fun, new challenge. And, as the mom of a toddler, baking vegan goodies with my daughter is much more fun--When she inevitably licks the bowl or samples something without permission, there's no raw egg to consider. My recipes usually contain very few ingredients and minimal stove time (a lot of things use a food processor or high speed blender, which makes her cover her ears, but then we move on). The only draw back is waiting for things to solidify in the freezer, but there's always something.
While some recipes rely on nuts and dates and tend to have a similar base (and often a similar taste, which is my vegan-husband's only complaint on plant-based treats), this recipe is pretty close to a traditional cream pie. It's a bit less sugar and uses coconut milk instead of cream, Earth Balance instead of butter--but beyond that, it's not far from the real deal.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Pie Bars
Crust:
1 cup Peanut Butter Puffins cereal
2 Tablespoons melted Earth Balance (vegan butter)
Blend cereal in a food processor or high speed blender (I do the latter and make a flour, but it's good course too). Melt the Earth Balance in a pan on low heat.
Line an 8" baking dish or pie pan with parchment and sprinkle the cereal into the bottom. Pour Earth Balance over it and using the back of a spoon, make a sort of "paste" that spreads to the corners of the dish. Once you have an even layer bake at 350 for about 12 minutes (keep an eye on it if your oven runs hot. Cereal flour, it turns out, burns fast once it starts to go).
While the crust bakes, start on the filling.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Filling:
3/4 a cup vegan chocolate chips (make sure they're sweetened, if you go the unsweetened route you'll need to add sugar, honey or maple syrup to taste--and you can do that anyway if you want a sweeter pie).
1 14oz can of coconut milk (depending on what brand of coconut milk you use, you'll get 13.6 oz or 14, sometimes even 15. They all work, just don't over fill the baking dish)
3 Tablespoons unsweetened peanut butter (If you have a good blender you should seriously consider buying dry roasted peanuts and making your own because it's just so much better, but any peanut butter will work).
In a sauce pan on low heat, pour coconut milk and simmer with chocolate chips until the chips start to melt, then add in peanut butter until it melts too (whisk regularly). Once smooth and everything is melted remove from heat--don't let it boil or you'll burn the chocolate and make it have to sit in the fridge even longer to solidify, you just want to heat the ingredients until they're smooth a mix well. (If your adding honey, syrup of sugar, add that in now too).
Once your crust has cooled and your coconut milk/chocolate/peanut butter mixture isn't hot anymore, pour the filling into the baking dish/pie pan, cover with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for about 4 hours.
*The bars pictured above are topped with a dusting of raw cocoa powder and a "date simple syrup"--(which is 4 dates soaked for about 3 hours until soft, then drained and thrown in a high speed blender with a table spoon of Earth Balance and 1/2 water).
And here's a fun tip: my husband likes this frozen--solid, as in difficult to cut it's so hard. If I try to give him the pudding consistency version I enjoy, he politely asks me to return his to the freezer until it's "done correctly." I think the pudding way is better, so I remove mine from the freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes before I want to eat it. If you go this route it's the consistency of a cream pie, which seems...normal. But I guess we all like what we like.
As I mentioned above, this could be a pie too, I just like bars and the fact that a square shape yields more pie per serving than a triangle. I'll leave it up to you.
Crust:
1 cup Peanut Butter Puffins cereal
2 Tablespoons melted Earth Balance (vegan butter)
Blend cereal in a food processor or high speed blender (I do the latter and make a flour, but it's good course too). Melt the Earth Balance in a pan on low heat.
Line an 8" baking dish or pie pan with parchment and sprinkle the cereal into the bottom. Pour Earth Balance over it and using the back of a spoon, make a sort of "paste" that spreads to the corners of the dish. Once you have an even layer bake at 350 for about 12 minutes (keep an eye on it if your oven runs hot. Cereal flour, it turns out, burns fast once it starts to go).
While the crust bakes, start on the filling.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Filling:
3/4 a cup vegan chocolate chips (make sure they're sweetened, if you go the unsweetened route you'll need to add sugar, honey or maple syrup to taste--and you can do that anyway if you want a sweeter pie).
1 14oz can of coconut milk (depending on what brand of coconut milk you use, you'll get 13.6 oz or 14, sometimes even 15. They all work, just don't over fill the baking dish)
3 Tablespoons unsweetened peanut butter (If you have a good blender you should seriously consider buying dry roasted peanuts and making your own because it's just so much better, but any peanut butter will work).
In a sauce pan on low heat, pour coconut milk and simmer with chocolate chips until the chips start to melt, then add in peanut butter until it melts too (whisk regularly). Once smooth and everything is melted remove from heat--don't let it boil or you'll burn the chocolate and make it have to sit in the fridge even longer to solidify, you just want to heat the ingredients until they're smooth a mix well. (If your adding honey, syrup of sugar, add that in now too).
Once your crust has cooled and your coconut milk/chocolate/peanut butter mixture isn't hot anymore, pour the filling into the baking dish/pie pan, cover with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for about 4 hours.
*The bars pictured above are topped with a dusting of raw cocoa powder and a "date simple syrup"--(which is 4 dates soaked for about 3 hours until soft, then drained and thrown in a high speed blender with a table spoon of Earth Balance and 1/2 water).
And here's a fun tip: my husband likes this frozen--solid, as in difficult to cut it's so hard. If I try to give him the pudding consistency version I enjoy, he politely asks me to return his to the freezer until it's "done correctly." I think the pudding way is better, so I remove mine from the freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes before I want to eat it. If you go this route it's the consistency of a cream pie, which seems...normal. But I guess we all like what we like.
As I mentioned above, this could be a pie too, I just like bars and the fact that a square shape yields more pie per serving than a triangle. I'll leave it up to you.
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