All-Natural Frozen Chocolate Peanut Butter Mini-Pies

This is my version of this Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie recipe I found on a forum. It's made with (mostly) full-sugar, full-fat, all-natural ingredients, so it's 163 calories per pie, not 130 calories. Unfortunately, some of these ingredients may be hard to come by unless you live close to a Whole Foods or similar grocery store. Even Trader Joe's stopped carrying the all-natural pudding mix. I was not happy when I discovered this.

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons flaxseed meal*
2 tablespoons butter (salted or unsalted), melted**
1 cup unsweetened rice milk
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon all-natural, unsalted peanut butter (creamy or crunchy)***
1 package Natural Desserts instant chocolate pudding****
1 cup Greek yogurt (0% or 1%)**


To Make:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners. In a small bowl, combine flaxseed meal and melted butter. Press the mixture into bottom of lined muffin cups (about 1 teaspoon of crumbs per muffin cup). Bake at 350 degrees for 5 minutes. Remove pan from oven and cool completely before filling.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the peanut butter and rice milk together on low speed. Add the pudding mix and beat for 1 minute. In a separate bowl, beat the yogurt on medium speed for about five minutes. Fold the yogurt into the peanut butter mixture. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups.
Freeze for several hours or overnight.

To serve, remove pans from freezer. Remove desired number of pies from pan, peel off liner and let stand at room temperature to soften slightly, about 5 minutes. Enjoy!

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*I initially made the crust with only 5 tablespoons of flaxseed, but then I couldn't get them out of the pan because the seeds didn't hold enough of the butter, so I switched the recipe to 6 tablespoons. Feel free to experiment with this.

**I used regular Greek yogurt in the hope that I could get it to fluff up like whipped cream, but it didn't quite do the job, so I'm going to try soy yogurt next time. I used butter because it was what I had, but feel free to try some vegan alternatives for both (and let me know how it goes).

***All-natural is the stuff you have to stir, like Adam's. I used unsalted because I think it tastes better, and there was enough salt in the other ingredients. It's just what I'd recommend, but, you know, it's not set in stone.

Chocolate Chip Cake.

I was going to post this about a week ago, but I got sort of distracted by packing. I found this recipe in my mother's old Betty Crocker cookbook several years ago when my brother decided to make a random cake one day. I was greatly disappointed to find out it's not in the new version of the Betty Crocker cookbook. It's a pretty simple recipe, although the filling is a bit tricky, but, more importantly, it's absolutely delicious.

Chocolate Chip Cake:

Cake -

2 cups flour
1 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
½ cup granulated sugar
3 tsps. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. soda
½ cup shortening
11/4 cups milk
3 eggs
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips
11/2 tsps. vanilla
Butterscotch Filling (below)
¼ cup finely chopped walnuts
Chocolate Chip Glaze (below) and salt.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 2 round layer pans, 8 or 9 inches. Measure all
ingredients except filling, walnuts and glaze into large mixer bowl. Blend ½ minute on low speed,
scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 minutes high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pans.

Bake 40 to 45 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool. Fill layers
with Butterscotch Filling, sprinkling nuts over filling. Spread Chocolate Chip Glaze over top of
cake.



Butterscotch Filling -

½ cup light brown suger (packed)
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup water
1 Tbsp. butter

Stir together sugar, cornstarch and salt. Stir in water. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture
thickens and boils. Boil and stir 1 minute. Blend in butter. Cool.



Chocolate Chip Glaze -

½ cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 Tbsps. Butter
1 Tbsp. light corn syrup

Heat all ingredients over low heat, stirring constantly, until chocolate is melted. Cool slightly.


NOTES:

I do the filling as I'm letting the cake cool.

I suggest you follow the recipe EXACTLY when doing the filling. If you don't do it JUST right, the filling tends to be a bit too squishy or a bit too hard, and therefore somewhat uncooperative when being put into the cake. I know this from experience.

I'd try the butterscotch filling for your first attempt, because it's delicious, but feel free to substitute any kind of filling and/or topping for this cake. It's hard to ruin.