Crunchy Vs Smooth: Does It Matter Which You Use In A Peanut Butter Pie?
When it comes to homemade desserts, it's hard to beat a freshly-baked pie. Of course, that crispy pie crust hiding plenty of apple filling is a classic, but if you're looking for something sweeter — or maybe your favorite fruit just isn't in season — it's worth making a peanut butter pie. When you make a homemade dessert, you call all of the shots, but should you use creamy or chunky peanut butter? Ultimately, the choice is yours, but for the best pie texture, you'll want to go with smooth and creamy.
Peanut butter pie isn't just a matter of dumping a jar of peanut butter into a pie crust. It usually involves beating the peanut butter with an electric mixer to combine it with other ingredients that smooth it out. The texture of peanut butter pie is important to how the dessert turns out, and beating smooth peanut butter ensures you'll get that buttery, creamy consistency that most people think of when they eat this treat. If you're serving the peanut butter pie to a crowd, and they're expecting it to be a smooth treat, they might be caught off guard by the random chewable pieces found when you use chunky peanut butter.
Garnish with peanut chunks if you want some crunch
Peanut butter pie filling is usually a combination of peanut butter, powdered sugar, and cream cheese, but heavy cream is sometimes added — and if you plan to use that last one, you'll almost certainly need an electric mixer in order to whip the cream, which adds to that creamy texture. If you're interested in adding a little crunch but don't want to catch guests by surprise, top the pie with ground peanuts for a garnish. This way, people know to expect a little crunch when they dig in.
Once the peanut butter is combined with other ingredients, it becomes even less a part of the pie, so those chunks will really be few and far between, which could come off as odd. Here's the bottom line: Smooth makes more sense for this recipe, but if you want to use chunky, don't be surprised if people are a little thrown off by the unexpected crunch in their dish.