Tuesdays with Dorie: Peanut Butter Torte

My first Tuesdays with Dorie was something that I'd been drooling over for a few weeks now. Peanut Butter Torte with Oreo Cookie Crust, chosen by Elizabeth from Ugg Smell Food. Anyone who knows me knows I have a mega-sweet tooth and that OREOS are the thing that I can eat forever. I typically don't have them in the house and I typically don't buy them either! I could have chosen to do a different, not-as-appealing crust in order to save my waistline, but what fun is that?? I just will do more cardio tomorrow.

I halved the recipe and it was the perfect amout to fill 4 mini springform pans. Food processing the Oreos was easy, even though I only have a mini-processor. What amazed me was that even though I used the entire Oreo, the crumbs were so fine and not sticky at all ...which I assumed they would be from the middle of the Oreo, but it was almost like I just had used the outsides. What is up with THAT?



The crust took a while to make, and was more challenging than I expected until I figured out a little trick to pressing the crust in...doing the sides first with the pan at an angle and pressing up from the curve of the pan...and then filling in the middle and pressing it down and up towards the sides.

I ran out of the chopped Oreos I had food processed right with just the bottom of one mini pan to go, so I just quickly mortar and pestled some Oreos in a bowl and got chubby chunks of them which I pressed into the bottom of the pan, kind of like a pebbled Oreo crust, looked kinda cool! The sides are normal...this is the one I kept for us since if it came out weird I didn't want anyone to see it HAHA. Froze them for 10 min, baked at 350 for 10 minutes, let them cool while we ate dinner.



Mixed up the peanut butter mousse which is heavy cream, cream cheese, confectioners sugar, chopped peanuts and mixture of cinnamon, chopped chocolate, nutmeg. Everything went well with the recipe...the mousse filler was just amazing.







I put a bit more cinnamon and nutmeg than the recipe called for and slightly less chocolate. It had a little more kick to it which I love.



Filled the pans, and let them chill in the fridge overnight.

I thought about topping the mousse with another thin layer of chopped Oreos before ganaching, but I'd already eaten them all, oh well! The ganache went on very easily, funny how sometimes my ganache comes out and other times it definitely doesn't. Unmolding them was easy using the 10 second hot towel trick from Dorie's book.


Some mini pb cups for toppers. Taste? Oh yeah, AMAZING. Peanut Butter, Oreos, and Chocolate?? Do you really have to ask? The original recipe can be found on Elizabeth's blog. I used less lightly salted peanuts, more cream cheese, more PB, and a little more butter for the Oreos.

When I brought this thing into work, my coworkers were insane with glee. I would def make it again esp for something like a party since it's such a people pleaser, but now that I have done it with no 'cheats' (well other than 1/3 less fat cream cheese since that's all I had in the fridge)...I would try making the crust with something a little lighter as there is a whopping 1/3 of the calories and fat SOLELY in the crust.



Which it's not like this is a healthy dessert regardless, but each individual sprinformed mini was about 1100-1200 calories. Cut into 5 pieces that's doable for a treat, but if you ate the whole thing? Yikes.