No Bake Peanut Butter Pie

Happy Forth of July to everyone!! I hope everyone's day was spent with friends, family, a cold one, some fireworks and of course, remembering what today is really about. In my case, I was at work, but because I chose to take Friday off instead so I could have a three day weekend. We didn't have any plans for today, so instead, made plans to go to Disney for the weekend. The boyfriend and I have yearly passes, so we like to go whenever we can. The weather is typical of Florida tonight; rainy and overcast, so fireworks might not happen. Even better that we are going to Disney, because their fireworks are amazing.

Seeing that I didn't get to participate in any BBQs today, I decided to make hotdogs tonight for dinner. Since a hotdog really isn't 't the most amazing recipe (though, I did have some sample hotdogs made all up at Publix tonight that I might just have to make and post about...very outside of the box and delicious), I decided that a good dessert was in order. I had a tube of Cool Whip in the fridge that I hadn't used and peanut butter sounded delicious. I've seen several recipes on the net about no bake peanut butter pies, so I decided to take a "slice" at it. The cool thing about this recipe is you can either go full fat or you can go Weight Watchers and healthy. Since I had more full fat ingredients on hand, that's the way that I went (I try to use what I have before I go shopping and already killed my WW for the week going out to eat for a friends going away and with Disney is this weekend...let's just say, there's always next week.) I used an Oreo crust to add a bit of chocolate and topped with with a few chocolate chips for looks. I have both recipes below. If made with lighter or fat free ingredients, 4 points a slice.

No Bake Peanut Butter Pie

• 5 oz cream cheese, softened or low-fat cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 heaping cup peanut butter or low-fat peanut butter
• 1 tub whipped topping or low-fat or fat-free whipped topping
• 1 Oreo pie crust or low-fat gram cracker crust

1. With an electric mixer on high, mix cream cheese and powdered sugar until well blended.
2. Add peanut butter and mix until well blended. 
3. Fold in whipped topping. Make sure you fold and don't mix or the whipped topping will loose its volume and turn to liquid.
4. Pour topping into pie crust.
5. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

Tips and Tricks

• Fold in broken up peanut butter cups or peanuts for extra texture.
• For a fun twist, use Nutella instead of peanut butter.
• Top with hot fudge or chocolate sauce for a bit more chocolate.
• Make a crust of crushed Nutter Butters for an extra peanut butter blast of flavor!