Bake or Break

Adventures of an amateur baker

Peanut Butter Tart

October 7th, 2007 · 20 Comments

Peanut Butter Tart
With the overwhelming love of peanut butter in my family, I consider it a wonderful challenge to find new peanut butter recipes for family to-dos. For my Daddy’s birthday, I started searching for a recipe and re-stumbled upon this recipe from Martha Stewart. It’s a lovely combination of graham cracker crust, chocolate ganache, and a fluffy peanut butter filling.

I had found this recipe some time last year and knew instantly that it would be quite a hit for us. I even went so far as to add the exact sized tart pan to my Amazon wishlist. Luckily, I got that pan for some gift-receiving occasion and have finally put it to good use.

Her recipe is near-perfect. Having now made it, I will assume the voice of experience and clarify a few directions. First, when making the ganache, keep whisking it in the ice bath until it thickens a good bit. Then, take it out and whisk it vigorously to incorporate enough air to stiffen the mixture. Secondly, when adding the whipped cream to the peanut butter mixture, add it in portions. Fold in the first couple of additions, then whisk in the rest. You may find other methods that work better for you, but these certainly helped me.

I cannot adequately express to you how good this tart is. It’s rich and flavorful without being overwhelming. Plus, it’s beautiful! It looks a lot more impressive than it should, given the amount of work that goes into it. My only complaint? Finding a serving tray for it. After an extensive search, I did find the perfect-sized tray at Kohl’s. We all certainly had no problem finishing every bite of it. As an added warm-weather bonus, there’s no baking involved. It’s a great dessert for saying farewell to summer.

Tags: chocolate · no bake · peanut butter · pies & tarts

20 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Meeta // Oct 8, 2007 at 12:00 am

    WOW! This looks yummy!Peanut butter in a tart - exquisite!

  • 2 lori // Oct 8, 2007 at 12:47 am

    Lordy, I don’t see enough peanut butter- anything here in Manila. This post makes the lack worthwhile.

  • 3 Abby // Oct 8, 2007 at 11:30 am

    I love peanut butter - to the point that I don’t BUY it because I’ll eat it all. So this pie, obviously, would be heaven for me!

  • 4 JEP // Oct 8, 2007 at 6:03 pm

    This MS recipe was on Tastespotting today—oh it sounds delicious & looks amazing!

  • 5 Kelly // Oct 9, 2007 at 10:00 pm

    I’ve got two questions - do you think I could do this without a food processor? I think the crust would be fine but what about the peanut butter filling? And, if I don’t have special tart pan, what would be an alternative-sized pan? Finally, I made he chocolate wafter ice box cake a few weeks ago, and it was great. Love your site.

  • 6 jennifer // Oct 10, 2007 at 9:15 am

    Kelly, you certainly don’t need a food processor for the crust. As for the filling, you could most likely make it with a hand mixer. It will just be a bit tedious because it will take a while to get it to the right consistency. You can use any sized pan that has roughly the same area and height. So, the area of my tart pan is about 58 & 1/2 square inches (length x width). The height is about an inch. If you have anything roughly that size, it shouldn’t be a problem. One nice thing about the pan I used is that the bottom is removable so that you can take out the tart with much less chance of breaking it.

    Good luck! Let me know how it works for you.

  • 7 Jennifer // Oct 11, 2007 at 9:39 am

    Hi. I made this the other night and did use a mixer (I broke my food processor bowl recently, ugh). I had to add a little extra sweetened condensed milk to mix it easier.
    I made this in a 9 inch springform pan and I put a piece of parchment paper on the bottom (before snapping the side part on) and that made it easier to remove. It was a bit thicker than the required pan size, so took a bit longer than 2 hours to chill.
    But, once chilled, it was so good.

  • 8 carrie // Oct 11, 2007 at 11:37 am

    all i can say is WOW… that looks amazing. I love peanutbutter!

  • 9 jennifer // Oct 11, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    I’m glad you liked it, Jennifer. Good to know that it works well in a springform pan.

    Carrie, thanks for the compliment. I, too, love love love peanut butter.

  • 10 Evelin // Oct 12, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    I am SO going to make this one. Thanks for feeding my hunger for peanut butter:)

  • 11 kate // Oct 16, 2007 at 4:46 am

    another fantastic way to have peanut butter. Looks gr8 .

  • 12 Paula // Oct 16, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Coming from the Peanut capitol of the world(no really),I’m always looking for great peanut butter desserts. This one certainly looks beautiful and sounds yummy!

  • 13 peabody // Oct 17, 2007 at 1:05 am

    Have mercy…my husband would kill for this!

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  • 19 Sarah // Mar 24, 2008 at 10:56 am

    I made this for Easter and it was delicious! I made 1-1/2 times the recipe and put it in a 10.25″ round tart pan. Also, I used my Kitchenaid stand mixer to make the peanut butter filling and it came together perfectly. I mixed the cream cheese and condensed milk on high until there were no lumps in the cream cheese, and then added the peanut butter.

  • 20 jennifer // Mar 24, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Sarah, I’m glad you liked it! Thanks for the info on adjusting the recipe for a round pan.

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