With Two Dinners under His Belt, Chef Jorge Whips up a Decadent Dessert This Week

Jordan Lander/ Erie Reader

The art of culinary is to make something that is simple become more appetizing by adding eye appeal and a surprise in the first bite. I had the pleasure of hosting a dinner party, at my house for three lovely ladies and myself. I find that food has a way of just opening people to conversation and leading to a  memorable time.

As we wined and dined on a spinach salad with my grandma's homemade cheese, a red wine rice, cinnamon spiced pork loin with apples, and a Cajun fried veggies, I ended our dinner with a simply elegant Peanut Butter Cake. 

The great part of this recipe is that it takes a few minutes to prep and only 10 minutes to bake.

It was in Blairsville, Pennsylvania that I first fell in love with peanut butter pie. It was not until last week that I finally worked out a recipe that I really enjoyed. But as with any recipe, nothing is written in stone, and there is always room to get more creative with even your own recipes.

So today, let us bake a simply elegant Peanut Butter Cake that will awe your friends while being as easy as pie to make.

INGREDIENTS

Crust

1 ½ C  Plain Bread Crumbs

2 Tbs   Sugar

8 Tbs   Butter (Melted)

Filling

1 Lb     Cream cheese

1¼ C   Powdered sugar

2 C      Crunchy Peanut butter

¼ C     Milk

6 oz     Frozen whipped topping (thawed)

RECIPE

Crust

First thing we do is turn our oven on to 375°F( this way we do not waste time waiting for the oven to heat up when we are done prepping)

Now we will take our stick of butter (the 8 Tbsp) and melt it on a low heat on our stove top ( you can also melt it in the microwave). What we are doing is melting the butter without browning it; if we brown the butter, we will change the flavor of our crust, and by the time we bake with it, our crust will have a burnt flavor.

As the butter is melting take your bread crumbs and sugar and mix them in a bowl.

Now let's add our melted butter in the bowl and mix it with a fork so that our bread crumbs are moist. It will look coarse and that is what we are looking for, we are not trying to make a dough.

Place our crust in a 8-inch Spring Pan. With our fingers pat it down evenly until we have an even flat layer.

Place it in the oven to bake for 10 minutes. When it is done it will have a nice golden brown color.

We will take it out of the oven and let it cool. (You can turn off the oven we are done baking)

Filling

In a clean mixing bowl, add our cream cheese cut up and our crunchy peanut butter and mix it with a mixer. (Mixing at a low speed)We are letting this mix until we have a consistent color. We want the mixture to be well-mixed and unified.

At this point we add our powdered sugar. As it is mixing our mixture is going to start drying up and looking clumpy.

Once we reach the point that our mixture looks clumpy, we add our milk; it will make a mixture look smoother again.

Now we turn off our mixer and fold in our thawed whipped topping to our mixture. (Folding is not mixing, folding is when you mix a heavier mixture into a lighter on by starting at the bottom of the bowl and working in a spiral motion slowly and gently combine the two mixtures; if you just mix the two mixtures we will loose volume and height).

Our mixture should now seem light and fluffy; at this point, we take our mixture and spoon it into our crust. (What I do is just spoon it all into the center and the worry about spreading it out evenly once all the mixture is in the bowl)

To garnish, I took a fork, and scratched the top of the cake to make a fun design.

Wrap the cake in the pan a put it in the fridge and let it chill for 15 minutes.

Sprinkled a little bit of chocolate over it and serve. Buen Provecho, my friends!