Recipe: Heatwave Pie

Hey look!

I’m evil.

So here we go:

My area is just now getting over a truly vile heatwave. I wanted delicious, delicious desserts, but the idea of turning on the oven in any way was hideously repugnant.

So I needed something that was no-bake. All right. What I came up with was Heatwave Pie. It is a slightly sticky, chilled, combination of chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, cheesecake, and more chocolate.

You’re going to need, for two pies:

Crust:
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
4 tablespoons white sugar
3 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 cup melted butter or margerine

Chocolate layer:
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter

Cheesecake layer:
1 bar cream cheese (8 oz/250g package) AT ROOM TEMPERATURE
1/2 to 1 cup peanut butter AT ROOM TEMPERATURE
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Caramel:
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 cup white sugar

When I refer to a given ingredient, I mean “in the context of the component we’re working on now”. So when I say “all the dry ingredients” below, I mean “all the dry ingredients marked as going into the crust”.

Okay then. We’ll start with the crust:
Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Mix well!

Add the butter and stir well- very well. You end up with something that looks like coarse, dark wet sand.

Put half the mixture in each of two pie plates, press into pie crust shape with fork, and put into refrigerator to chill for 20 minutes.

Chocolate layer:
Put all the ingredients except for the cocoa into a saucepan on the stove, stir well. Place on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture comes to a full rolling boil.

Add the cocoa, mix well, and remove from heat. Give it a few moments to cool before pouring half of it into the bottom of each pie crust, then return it to the fridge.

Start the caramel:
When you’re making caramel, keep a bowl of ice-water handy. This stuff gets HOT and you may want to sink your fingers into some cold water in a very great hurry.
Put the sugar in what might appear to be an over-large saucepan on medium heat. We’ll come back to this later; just don’t take too long on the next step.

Mix the filling:
Put the sugar and whipping cream in a bowl and beat until you have whipped cream. Beat in, on low speed, the lemon juice, peanut butter and the cream cheese.

Examine the caramel: The bottom part of the sugar should be transparent and turning liquid. Stir gently- do not allow it to burn, and do not overstir (the way I totally did). If you manage to get lumps as in my picture below, turn the heat down to low and keep cooking- most of the lumps should melt away.

While the caramel is cooking, gently spread half the cheesecake filling into each pie plate.

When the caramel is the color of an old penny (slightly darker than in my photo above, and hopefully with less lumpy-bits), pour the half-cup of cream in and stir well. Now you see why you have an over-large saucepan, as this causes caramel to bubble and froth beyond all human reason. Remove it from heat and let it sit for a minute or two.

Before it cools so far as to harden, pour half of it artistically over the top of each pie. When you’ve gotten the saucepan as empty as you possibly can, fill the saucepan with hot water (don’t try to clean it by hand, as that’s a recipe in frustration- just let the water dissolve it overnight/over the next few hours).

Put the pies into the refrigerator. Serve cold.

A few notes:
The caramel seems to harden very enthusiastically. It can make actually slicing the pie a tricky business. I’m not sure how to deal with this, as yet.

If you want, you can chop up some almonds and put them on top of the pie, as I did here:

This step is totally optional.

Enjoy!