Original Recipe Source: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_75315,00.html
It was very late one night. This was during my previous incarnation as an accountant, and things were not going well at work. My husband was away on business, I was alone and I simply could not sleep. I turned on the television and began flipping channels. I landed, as I almost always do, on the Food Network. The show was Good Eats and as near as I could tell Alton Brown was sitting around and chatting with George Washington Carver. Now, I hadn't heard anything about Mr. Carver since I was in grade school, but I was pretty sure that the gentleman had passed away something like a hundred years ago. Further research just now has informed me that he actually only passed away 65 years ago. (Said research was actually pretty fascinating, and has caused one phase of my dinner to overcook slightly. I think it will be recoverable, though, so no harm.) Anyway, whether he passed away 100 years ago or 65 years ago, he died before Alton Brown was born, so why was he on my television? I checked my evening medications and to the best of my ability to make out all that tiny print, allergy meds are not known to cause hallucinations of deceased inventors.
After a few moments it occurred to me that this was an actor (hey, I said it was late at night!), but I kept watching anyway. The episode was entirely about peanuts. I cannot eat peanuts. I would die, and then who would walk the dog? Still, one dish in particular called my name. It was the Peanut Butter Pie. Of course, I couldn't make a peanut butter pie. I could, however, substitute something else. Something tasty. I was early into my Almond Phase. I decided to make it with almond butter. Of course, I couldn't find anything labeled "wafer cookies" in the store, so I substituted something I found at Trader Joe's that was called Cat Cookies or something like that. They were chocolate, and not much else, and I liked them. (They are not made from cats. The cookies are vaguely cat shaped. Put down the phone, there's no need to call the animal rescue people.) I made two pies: one for Thanksgiving dessert, which I froze. The other I brought in to work to test out on my guinea pigs - er, co-workers. It was a fabulous, wonderful hit. I loved it. The pie went over like gangbusters at Thanksgiving, too, and again at Christmas when I brought it to our family Christmas Eve celebration.
Since I've been trying to become a better baker, I decided that I would make this pie again for Fearless Kitchen. I decided, however, that this time I was going to do it the way it was intended to be done, or at least a lot closer to the intent than I had been doing it. I found proper chocolate wafer cookies. I also decided to use cashew butter instead of almond butter. There are two reasons for this. One is that when I make savory dishes that call for peanuts, I always substitute cashews. They're similar enough in texture and response to cooking, at least as far as I'm concerned, that they work. Why not use cashews for a sweet dish too? The second reason is that I had one jar of almond butter and one jar of cashew butter, I found another blogger recipe (I'll be baking it later, don't you worry!) that called for peanut butter, and I thought that the almond butter would go better with the sour cherry preserves for that dish. So cashew butter it was.
The verdict? Well, first of all the wafer cookies were a disappointment. I don't know if it's just the brand of wafer cookies I bought, or if Mr. Brown meant something else, but they didn't work well at all. They dissolved when the melted butter was added to the food processor. I did the best I could to get the liquid goo to coat the pie plate, but it just wasn't happening. The cashews didn't work badly. I still think I prefer the almond butter, but the cashew butter had a good flavor and worked just as well with the chocolate ganache on top. At the end of the day, I love this pie, and I will make it again (and again, and again.) However, I'll do it with the more solid cookies, and probably with the almond butter.
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