frozen butterfinger pie

Need a quick and easy dessert for Fourth of July today? I got the hook up for you!

Last week I was planning on making dinner (macaroni and cheese — oh, I’ll have to post that one next week) and was asking Jake if he thought I should make dessert, too. He’s not a dessert person so he just kind of shrugged his shoulders at me. I decided it was better to ask Chris, our out of town friend, what he thought. He was much more receptive to the idea. Chris mentioned something about butterfingers and Jake then mentioned a pie, so butterfinger pie came up to the plate. See, I don’t even think of these things myself sometimes.

[The cast of characters]

This is a pretty simple no bake pie. You don’t have to freeze it – you can just leave it in the fridge – but freezing it gives it an almost ice cream like texture, perfect for a warm summer day. As you can see, you also don’t need a whole lot of ingredients to make this pie!

[Crush the vanilla wafers – bang, bang, bang!]

I decided I wanted to do this pie with vanilla wafers. You can also do an Oreo crust, graham cracker crust, or buy a premade shell. I put the wafers in a plastic bag and started to bang away on them until they were smooth crumbs.

[Melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar melds the vanilla wafers together to form a crust]

Add a tablespoon of sugar and six tablespoons of melted butter. Press it into a pie pan. I decided to bake mine for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees just to set it up a little, but you don’t really need to do that.

[Looks weird and gross now, but will turn magical very shortly!]

The ingredients don’t look very good when sitting together unmixed in a bowl. Looks like of gross, actually. Stirring it makes it magically delicious.

[Mixing with a wooden spoon gives your arm quite the workout]

I was at Jake’s and couldn’t find the mixer… so I did this mixing by hand! Damn. These ingredients are pretty stiff, even at room temperature, and gave me a pretty good arm workout.

You can pretend you can’t find your mixer, too, if you want a good workout.

[Chop up those butterfingers – I liked the pieces to be a little chunky]

Chris bought like four King sized Butterfingers – I only used two of them. Three of the pieces went into the pie, one was saved to put on the very top.

[Fold in the whipped cream stuff]

Add in the whipped cream stuff (Cool Whip, real whipped cream, whatever floats your boat) and gently fold it into the mixture. Then add the butterfingers and give it another toss. Put the mixture into your pie crust and stick it in the freezer for about an hour.

[Finished Butterfinger Pie]

This is the result of all of that (hard) work! I used a bit of the leftover cream to top off the pie and put more crushed butterfinger pieces on the very top.

[I’ll just have a small slice, please. This thing is rich!]

Cut yourself a slice and enjoy! This is a rich, peanut butter-like pie. Cold, creamy and delicious.

Frozen Butterfinger Pie
(adapted from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen)

For the crust

• 2 and 1/2 cups of crushed vanilla wafers
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 6 tablespoons melted butter

For the pie filling

• 8 oz block cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 of a 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 3/4 of a tub of Tru Whip (or Cool Whip, or actual whipped cream), thawed
• 4 full size Butterfinger candy bars, chopped (reserve one for the topping)

Crush the vanilla wafers until finely ground. Add sugar and melted butter and press into pie pan. Set aside. If desired, bake at 350 degrees for about ten minutes to set the crust.

Mix together softened cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, peanut butter and powdered sugar together in a bowl until well incorporated.

Use about 3/4 of a tub of your Tru Whip and gently fold it into the filling mixture. Add 3 chopped butterfingers to the filling and mix.

Pour filling into prepared pie crust. Freeze for about one hour. Add the remainder of the Tru Whip to the top of the pie and top with remaining crushed butterfingers.