Year of the Pie - Pie #33 Peanut Butter Pie

I emailed my aunt Martha, she is an uber-cook. She couldn't find my granny's peanut butter pie recipe. Checked with my mom and she didn't have one. She had me check with my Uncle Delmar up in Michigan. Nothing. I didn't like the looks of the Betty Crocker recipe. So I checked my handy dandy Mennonite Cookbook. It has a lot of recipes that I like. It has four peanut butter pie recipes in it. I carefully reviewed them and chose Mrs. Noah Yoder's version. This is definitely a SHARE IT and SPARE IT pie. [ Share it to be nice, Spare the bellyache] Folks at church liked it a lot. Cut it into 12 pieces if you can. I DID take a bite and it was rich and very peanut buttery!

Make a 9 inch pie crust, {1 C. flour, 1/4 t. salt, 1/3 C. + 1 T. shortening, mix in 1 T. of ice water at a time}Prick it with a fork, chill it for about 30 minutes. Bake on 475 for 8-10 minutes. Don't let it burn.

Blend 1/2 C. peanut butter and 2/3 C. powdered sugar and make a crumb mixture. Sprinkle about 2/3 of it over the bottom of the baked pie shell.

Combine 3 egg YOLKS, 1/2 t. salt, 3 T. cornstarch, & 2/3 C. sugar and stir into 3 C. scalded milk.The picture below is of the milk almost scalded. Basically, the way I understand it is, you heat the milk over low heat until you see some steam coming up off the milk and you see little bubbles around the edge. If you give it a little stir you should find a film over it. I think it is done then.

So,after you add the mixture, cook it until thick, stirring constantly. Add 1 and 1/2 t. vanilla and 1 T. butter, cut up. See picture below. Cool slightly. Pour into the pie shell over the peanut butter crumb mixture.

Make a meringue from the 3 egg whites (that are at room temperature), 1/4 t. cream of tartar and 1/2 C. sugar. Mrs. Yoder says to use 6 T. of sugar, but I made a meringue the other day that called for 1/2 C. of sugar and it turned out pretty good. So, you choose.
She also puts the remaining 1/3 of the crumb mixture over the top of the meringue. I didn't do that. So whether you choose to do that or not you need to bake the meringue for 8 - 10 minutes at 375. Keep and eye on it.

I neglected to take a picture of the final pie.
Thanks for stopping by....until next time.