Chocolate and Peanut Butter Pudding Pie
When life gives you overly crisp macarons... make chocolate peanut butter pudding pie.
Sometimes, it can feel tempting to throw in the towel. Horrifying news, heart ache, tensions rising, and your macarons come out of the oven too flat and crispy.
If you have tried to make macarons or have read my post, you can appreciate the disappointment one might feel after going through all that effort.
I remade the macarons and they came out imperfect but delicious.
Luckily, I had the foresight to hold on to the extra-crispy macarons. After a few days of wallowing, I wanted to find out if I could make something nice out of my perceived failure. Motivated by wanting to do something nice for a certain chocolate and peanut butter-lover, I wondered if I could use the chocolate macarons as a basis for a chocolate pie crust. Secondarily, I aimed to test whether I, a perennial pudding jinxer, could make a luscious, thick pudding.
Methods and Materials
Crust:
First, I crushed up my macarons. This part was quite therapeutic.
Second, I melted margarine and added it slowly until it resembled coarse sand. Your ratios and amounts will differ by the amount of cookies you have. Start small, add slowly. Another life lesson?
Then, I pressed it into my mini makeshift pie plate.
Finally, since I knew my filling would be added cold and not baked in the crust, I baked it at 350 until it was a little more golden.
Filling:
I began with a Jello pudding mix. The box indicated that instructions for a dairy-free recipe could be found on their website, but I could not find it. Assuming dairy-free milk is typically thinner than dairy milk, I added 1 3/4 cup instead of the full 2 cups the recipe on the box calls for.
Shocking to no one who knows me and my history with puddings, it was quite thin.
After refrigeration, I melted peanut butter in the microwave so that it would be easier to stir in the pudding. It measured out about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup and it really thickened up the pudding, not to mention adding delicious flavor.
Final preparation:
Finally I poured the pudding into the cooled crust, did my best to smooth it out, and ultimately piped on some melted chocolate chips to make it more Insta-worthy.
Results
It did not exactly slice well but it sure was cute and delicious.
Discussion
In conclusion, my hypotheses were mostly supported. I was able to salvage my macaron fail, make something else delicious, and share some love.
Does chocolate peanut butter cure the ails of the world? Would I have been able to make pudding without peanut butter? Am I completely over the failed macarons? Maybe not, but maybe the lessons and joy from baking and sharing do bring a little light in the darkness. Hard knocks in life teach us to be resilient and flexible, finding new ways to create goodness out of the bad.