TWD - peanut butter torte

Peanut butter and chocolate – a match made in heaven!! Peanut butter and chocolate are two of my favourite foods and they both featured in this week’s TWD challenge – peanut butter torte. The torte is almost like a cheesecake – a biscuit base with a cream cheese and peanut butter filling, topped with chocolate ganache. I love peanut butter and am guilty of often being caught with my finger or a teaspoon in the jar. And of course, I love chocolate as well, so I was pretty excited about this challenge.

Not really having anything special to make this for, I decided to quarter this recipe and make mini tortes instead. I made them in cupcake cases and then peeled off the cases. The base was a mixture of oreo cookie and melted butter. Oreos are an American cookie and have only recently become available in NZ. This was the first time I had bought them – I cant say that I really liked them, but then I don’t really like bought biscuits anyway. They made the perfect base though and I would definitely use them again where I need a chocolate biscuit base.

The filling was a mixture of cream cheese, peanut butter and whipped cream, studded with a mixture of chopped peanuts, chocolate chips and a touch of espresso powder and cinnamon. I forgot to buy salted peanuts like the recipe called for, so just used raw peanuts which I lightly roasted. I used lite peanut butter as well, just to make myself feel marginally better about eating the finished product. I would have used lite cream cheese, but it doesn’t seem to set up as well as the full fat stuff.

After the filling is chilled inside the crust, it is topped with a ganache and chopped peanuts. I loved this torte. I actually think the wee individual ones look really cute and are less intimidating to eat. This is quite an American dessert I think – peanut butter and chocolate is not a combination you see very often in NZ.

I would definitely make this again! Check out the other TWDers tortes here.