Recipe: Heartbreak Pie
I am presenting you with my recipe for Heartbreak Pie. It’s called that because it is very easy, takes ten minutes, and requires no baking, and yet everyone likes it more than the incredibly finicky pie you spent hours over a hot oven perfecting.
You may be looking at me with suspicion about the fact that the filling of this pie contains tofu and no sugar other than that in the chocolate chips. I assure you, this pie is rich, creamy, and just the right amount of sweet. I would not attempt to deceive you with a “healthy” dessert that tastes like shit.
By default, the Heartbreak Pie is vegan, but if all you have is dairy milk, dairy butter, or dairy-containing chocolate chips, that also works fine probably. I don’t know, I haven’t tried because it would be sadistic to make this pie without letting my husband eat it. Heartbreak Pie is omnivore-approved, with many people not realizing that it’s vegan until they see my husband eating it.
I think you’re supposed to post a picture of the food you baked but I didn’t think that far ahead and I’m trying to write 30 blog posts in a month, so I don’t want to delay the post. In lieu of a picture, please accept a thematically appropriate song from the musical Waitress, although she’s heartbroken about love and not about how little anyone cares about her hard work:
Ingredients
Your preferred way of keeping things from sticking to the pan (oil, butter, parchment paper, non-stick cooking spray, etc.)
1 cup Oreos
1/4 cup butter
2 cups chocolate chips
This is the only source of sugar in the recipe other than the crust, so the sweeter the chocolate chips the sweeter your pie will be. Standard chocolate chips work fine, but feel free to experiment.
12 ounces firm tofu (about 3/4 of a standard container in the U.S.)
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
Any kind, but if it’s crunchy you may have little peanut bits in the pie.
1/2 cup milk
Steps
Prepare a 9-inch pie pan, or other pan of similar size, in whatever way you prefer to keep things from sticking to it.
Put the Oreos in a Ziploc bag (you may need to do two rounds, depending on the size of the bag). Hit them with the back of a spoon until they’re crushed. Turn the bag over a couple of times to make sure they’re evenly crushed. This is very satisfying if you’re mad about something, and then you get to eat pie to soothe your feelings.
Melt the butter.
Put the Oreos and butter in a bowl together and stir until combined.
Press the Oreos and the butter on the bottom of the pan until it is evenly covered.
Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave.
Put the chocolate chips in any microwave-safe bowl.
Heat for ten seconds, then stir thoroughly.
Repeat until the chocolate chips are melted. Melted chocolate chips hold their shape a little, so don’t be tricked. If you stir it and it’s smooth all the way through, it’s melted.
DO NOT HEAT FOR LONGER THAN LIKE FIFTEEN SECONDS AT A TIME IT WILL BURN
IMMEDIATELY pour the melted chocolate chips into your food processor. Don’t wait to pour them in or it will resolidify and you will be very sad.
I mean, you can just melt them again, but why repeat the only tricky part of this recipe?
Add the tofu, peanut butter, and milk. Blend until smooth.
If it’s too thick, add a splash of milk and blend more. But be cautious in adding milk: I don’t know any way to make it thicker if you accidentally make it too thin.
Pour the filling into the crust and refrigerate for two hours, or until you want to eat it, but everyone will start whining “is it ready yet????” after ninety minutes so probably you won’t wait that long.
I tried this! Admittedly did not try the actual pie yet as it's in the chilling process. But I had some of the extra filling as a mousse topped with blueberries and chia seeds which was quite delicious. Not very sweet, which I personally like.
Notes I took from the process:
-It wasn't clear to me if I should use 1 cup of whole or crushed Oreos. I found 1 cup whole pieces to yield too few, and 1 cup crushed to be a bit on the low side to cover a whole 9-inch pan. 1.25 cups crushed would be my ideal estimate (which is maybe around 3.5-4 cups whole.) I might not have crushed them angrily enough, resulting in less surface area.
-The mousse in the blender is VERY sticky, not pleasant at all to get out of the bowl, and did not blend well even after trying to do so as quickly as possible. I had to add about 2 cups milk and even then it wouldn't combine (maybe I need a better blender?) If I made this again, I would probably melt the chocolate in a double boiler, add milk, add peanut butter, then pour chocolate-peanut butter milk over tofu and blend. Granted this is the best-tasting tofu chocolate mousse I've had, so it's possible some textural warring is worth it.
-Ingredient notes: I used a mix of about 80% unsweetened almond milk + 20% coconut milk, Imperial for butter, and dairy-free chips. (I considered using semisweet baking chocolate which melts better but it's more expensive per oz by a fair amount.) I had some homemade almond butter leftover so used half that and half creamy peanut butter.
-Tasting notes: I really like the flavor almonds imparted, even with the slightly lower fat content, so I'd consider using just that in the future. Much more expensive though. I also added about 1/4 a cup of coffee as inspired by the comments here (which I wouldn't skip; it really enhances depth of flavor.)
-Variant ideas: I would probably try adding around a teaspoon of salt next time. I am really not a "viscerally salted" desserts person (e.g. Hu chocolate is too salty for me,) but I think it could turn the overall flavor into more of a knockout. I imagine this pie could be easily built on using other ingredients - fresh raspberries and mint, coconut shreds, crushed almonds and cherries, etc., either dumped on top, mixed in, or blended. I might also play with ratios in the future to have less peanut butter+milk to more chocolate (but I like chocolate a lot and find peanut butter proportionately meh, so YMMV.) I would also consider subbing in cookie butter/hazelnut butter/nutella, with 1/2 tablespoon coconut oil or some other fat mixed in to correct for texture.
-This is the most calorie-dense dessert I have made in the past 6 months. (I find this to be true of most non-finnicky desserts, since they often rely on sugar/fat content in the base ingredients to taste good.) I could imagine it being good for a birthday party or after an intense bout of cardio, but not an every-weekend kind of dish for my personal habits.
Thank you for the recipe!
I've made this twice in the past 48h for different friend gatherings :)