Peanut-Chocolate Pielets

An experiment: tiny pies made in a muffin pan. In this case, each has a pie crust, peanuts, a pecan-pie-like peanut-butter & corn-syrup filling, and a healthy dose of dark chocolate.

Not a complete success (as usual, I underbaked, so that the crusts were mushy and the filling gooey)... but successful enough that I'm going to keep trying.

Also, yum.

This recipe started from Ken Haedrich's book Pie, in the form of "Trail Mix Peanut Butter Pie". He has a note about making individual small pie pans and taking the pie hiking... which is so ridiculous that it fired my imagination. My wife was going to have a long plane flight... why not take a couple tiny pies?

The problem: no tiny pie pans. The obvious solution? A muffin pan.

Then, the pie contained raisins, and we didn't want them. So... out with the raisins. Now, suddenly, this really isn't a "trail mix" pie, it's a massively decadent peanut & chocolate pie. Well, OK.

For the crust, I had a leftover disc of dough in the freezer from my current favorite, the Four & Twenty Blackbirds recipe.

The recipe:

Trail Mix Pie

3 large eggs, room temperature1 large egg yolk1/2 cup sugar2 tbsp light brown sugar, firmly packed1/3 cup smooth peanut butter1 cup light corn syrup1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted1 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla paste)1/2 cup salted dry-roasted peanuts (I used 3/4 cup)1/2 cup raisins (I used 0 cups!)1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I used 3/4 cup)

1. Place pie crust (already in the pie plate) in freezer for 15 minutes, then partially prebake and let cool. Preheat oven temperature to 350 degrees. (I did this part very differently- I rolled out the dough, cut out rounds using a bowl about 4.25" across, trying not to re-roll any more than necessary-- pressed each round into a pre-buttered muffin tin-- and wound up with about 7 muffin spots occupied-- then froze the whole pan for an hour or so before continuing.)

2. Combine the eggs, egg yolk, and sugars in a large bowl and beat ~15 seconds with an electric mixer. Add the peanut butter, corn syrup, and butter and beat again until smooth. Blend in the vanilla. Stir in the peanuts and raisins. Scatter the chocolate chips evenly over the bottom of the cooled pie shell(s) and pour in the filling. (I wound up discovering that there was much more filling than I had dough. So, at a loss for what else to do with it, I just poured the rest into unoccupied muffin spots. For the most part this was a disaster- but a couple of them came out just fine, little custardy muffin shapes. And I ate enough of the ones that didn't come out properly to have a stomach ache afterwards. So it's not like it didn't taste good.)

3.  Place the pie on the center oven rack and bake until the perimeter of the filling has puffed up and perhaps cracked slightly, 40 to 45 minutes, rotating pie halfway between. (The muffin tin came out after about 23 minutes. In retrospect it should have stayed in at least another 10, to crisp up the dough and finish setting the gelatinous ooze of the filling. The tops were nicely browned though, and in a moment of foolishness I yoinked out the pan, thinking, hmm, 20 minutes is probably fine- they're in a muffin tin. But, no. If I could tell myself one thing to prevent most of the pie failures I've had over the past several months, it'd be leave that pie in the oven, dummy. I haven't yet burned a single pie. But I've made a bunch that were under-cooked. Including this/these one/s. Perhaps I will learn eventually)

4. Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let cool. Pie may be covered with loosely tented aluminum and refrigerated prior to serving. (So, extracting these fellas from their muffin-pan mama wound up being a bit of a chore. They were too gooey to come out solid without the greatest delicacy. I started by letting the whole pan cool for about 15 minutes, then took one of those flexy oval-tipped cake knives around the edges to loosen edges and sides. Then I was able to slide it down one side of the muffin/pie, and slide a butter knife down the opposite side, and gently lift. Most came out in one piece- a few of the crust-less ones turned to mush halfway out, and had to be devoured immediately with a spoon. I think if they'd been cooked 35-40 minutes this wouldn't have been a problem).

And, now for the pictures:

A buttered muffin pan!

Rolling out, then cutting 4.25" or so rounds:

(Awkwardly) pressing the rounds into the muffin pan:

Mixing the filling:

Lining the mini-pies with delicious chocolate: 

Mixing, mixing, mixing:

Pouring the mix into the pie-lets. I am a sloppy, sloppy pourer.

Hmmm.... what am I going to do with all this leftover filling? ... I know... I'll pour it into the other muffin spots, even without crust.

Puffy and browned, fresh out of the oven:

Slightly cooled, and deflated:

Successfully (sort of) extracted, and looking, well, like a lot of sweetness and fat:

Well, as noted above, these were badly underbaked. The dough was a little mushy, and the filling gooey. But otherwise they were pretty decadently delicious, and this would be a great recipe to retry. This mini-pie approach has some really interesting possibilities, too. So that's exciting.