giant peanut butter rocky road cookie pie
Thursday baking dressed for success with a Giant Peanut Butter Rocky Road Cookie Pie. All of the favorite traditional Rocky Road components stuffed into a dazzling peanut butter dough and spruced up with a rich chocolate buttercream laced with Kahlua. Oh yeahhhh.
A Rocky Road dessert is usually encased in a dark chocolate barrier, but I wanted to be a bit different in my interpretation. I don’t have much by way of peanut buttery desserts on VE, excepting the ridiculous Peanut Butter Milk N’ Cookies Cake I baked for my 27th birthday, so why not change the game a bit and add marshmallows, peanuts, and dark chocolate to a big old peanut butter cookie?
We rode through Elsa pretty painlessly. Aside from relegating myself to a treadmill speed workout that morning due to the wind still whipping on the island – I think it hit 40 mph at points even after the storm churned north of us at that hour – not much from the day was altered. I walked around the river for a bit to scope out the damage, and didn’t even see many puddles to report. The water drew up against the seawall and at high tide more than likely spilled over, though no flooding. Overnight I heard the rain slice against the bedroom window so I know we got a few fierce squalls. No real harm, though. The plants were inside and safe, we were safe, and debris even was pretty minimal.
Hurricane season runs for a good while, though, and having an “E” named storm already is fairly alarming. Last year the Atlantic and Caribbean were incredibly active and while we were spared of anything worse than a few episodes of minor flooding, readiness and caution is always the name of the game.
Think of this as a simple cookie restricted not by its size. Essentially, you create a peanut butter cookie dough, fold in some goodies, and instead of separating it into individual balls, pat it firmly into a prepared cake pan. The baking time is around triple what a tray of cookies usually is, more or less because you’re baking three batches of cookies at once. Make sense?
Start by creaming some butter and brown sugar together. Most of my cookies are brown sugar-based because they turn crisp and golden and the subtle molasses flavor enhances the other ingredients more so than white sugar does for me.
After that, beat in the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla. I prefer using a creamy peanut butter that is not natural. Ones with palm oil or another stabilizer hold up better in cooking than ones with separated oils. I prefer eating those on oats or snacks otherwise, but not in cuisine.
In a small bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients in three patches to the wet ingredients, whipping after each until just combined. Do not overmix the batter. With a spatula, fold in some chopped peanuts, chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows. Your Rocky Road decorations.
Press the pie into a greased springform pan. I prefer springform for easier handling once its baked, and the bottom tray helps with later storage. If you don’t mind waiting a bit longer for cooling, use a pie pan. Removal of the whole pie from the pan won’t be easy, but if that isn’t an issue for you, it works just as well.
The finisher? A Kahlua-infused chocolate buttercream. Of course, if you bake this for a kid’s party, omit the Kahlua and just use a skosh more heavy cream, but the coffee flavor makes the chocolate pop and I absolutely adore sliding it into recipes as much as I can. The resulting buttercream is wonderfully smooth and airy, much like the frosting in the Triple Layer Chocolate Explosion Cake.
I really just had aesthetic in mind when I frosted the pie. More common is piping a delicate swirl all around the perimeter to create a buttercream ring. I merely wanted to showcase the naked view of the pie versus the dreamy buttercream.
Though there’s nothing wrong with having a slice brimming with frosting one day and just cookie the next.
Mom actually baked cookie pies fairly often when I was a kid. Cookies themselves were a mainstay, usually the Tollhouse chocolate chip variety (honest to God the best ever) but something extra charming exists within a mega-sized cookie. I remember walking through the malls too and spotting the Great American Cookies variety, usually studded with multihued frostings and Happy Birthday greetings and whathaveyou. I’d recommend this one for an occasion as such. It can feed a ton of folks and doesn’t involve multiple baking sheets.
Less cleanup? I’m in.
Tried this recipe out? Leave a comment below with your thoughts, and don’t forget to come say hi on Instagram and show me what you made!
Leftover marshmallows lying around? These Campfire S’mores brownies are just the thing!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
- 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg, at room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 2/3 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup peanuts, roughly chopped
- 1 cup dark chocolate chips
- 1 cup mini marshmallows
whipped chocolate buttercream
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder
- 2 tbsp Kahlua (optional)
- 1-2 tbsp heavy whipping cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch springform pan with butter or oil.
- With a stand or hand mixer, cream brown sugar and butter for 2-3 minutes until whipped and fluffy. Beat in the peanut butter until combined, then the egg and vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. In three batches, add the dry ingredients to the wet and whip until each is just combined. If the batter is crumbly, add 1-2 tbsp milk of choice to thin it out. Peanut butter cookie dough is traditionally very thick, but should be cohesive.
- Fold in the chopped peanuts, chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows. Press dough into prepared pan and bake 25-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in center yields only a few moist crumbs. Let cool 5-10 minutes in the pan, then remove the springform wall and cool completely on a wire rack.
- To make the buttercream, beat powdered sugar, butter, cocoa powder, Kahlua (if using), heavy cream, and vanilla until silky.
- Pipe frosting on the cake in whatever pattern sounds most fun to you!
