Peanut Pie with Shortbread-Cookie Crust

This is a pie that doesn’t pretend to be a health food. The crust is shortbread cookies blitzed with peanut butter and pressed in, no flour, no rolling, no chilling. The filling is brown sugar, dark corn syrup, eggs, and vanilla, studded with chopped peanut butter cookies and a full cup of roasted peanuts. Three forms of peanut, two forms of cookie, one slice that ends every dinner argument.

The crust technique is what makes this pie unusual. Peanut butter replaces melted butter as the binder, which means the crust tastes like peanuts from the first bite and bakes into something firmer than a typical crumb crust, almost shortbread cookie-like in its own right. The brief 6-minute pre-bake at 375°F (190°C) sets the crumbs before the wet filling goes in.

Dark corn syrup over light is the right choice here. With so much going on in the filling, you want the molasses depth to ground all the sweet, salty peanut flavors instead of letting them slide into one-note candy.

Pro Tips

• Pulse the shortbread cookies until finely ground, then add peanut butter and process again. Adding peanut butter too early gums up the cookie crumbs unevenly.
• Press the crust thicker around the rim than at the bottom. Crumb crusts tend to thin out at the edges as the filling settles.
• Beat the eggs only until just blended. Overbeating adds air that puffs and cracks during baking.
• Pull the pie when the top is browned but the center still wobbles. Overcooking gives a chewy, leathery filling.
• Cool at least an hour on a rack so the filling sets.

Variations

• Use chocolate chip cookies in place of peanut butter cookies for a chocolate-peanut twist.
• Drizzle melted chocolate and a sprinkle of flaky salt over the cooled pie.
• Add 2 tablespoons bourbon to the filling for a Southern-style variation.