Second Chances

I love to cook. I love creating new recipes. I love making old favorite recipes. I love being resourceful in the kitchen. If you like a good kitchen disaster story with a resourceful and delicious ending, then this story is for you. Enjoy. :)

Rewind to November: I made a Key Lime Pie. It was so creamy and delicious, and literally the first Key Lime Pie I've ever been able to eat without completely covering it in whipped cream. It was amazing...and simple! The ingredients were cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, lime juice, and food coloring. I couldn't believe how perfect it was! I Pinned the recipe, thinking, "It has such a great base of ingredients, I can change it up all I want and make all sorts of pies just by using cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk!"

Fast forward to December: I made delicious peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for our trip back to Iowa. I made a TON. I put them in a container and added that to the large cooler of food we were bringing with us.

Jump into January: We got home, and I realized we had only eaten half of the cookies, and they were starting to get stale. Bummer! However, this was right after our truck broke down, so I didn't want to just throw things away. In my resourcefulness, I threw all the cookies into my Vitamix and blended until they were just crumbs. It made about 3 cups of peanut butter chocolate chip cookie crumbs - enough for 2 pies! I sealed them in a bag and stored for later.

Now come back to this week. On Tuesday, I decided that I wanted to make a pie. I didn't have a lot of pie ingredients on hand, but I had cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk! I mixed those together for the pie filling. I prepared half of the cookie crumbs for the crust (along with ¼ cup of butter and powdered sugar) and pressed the crust into my pie tin. Then, I melted ½ cup of chocolate chips and ½ cup of Reeses peanut butter chips together, and poured it on the crust. Finally, I poured the filling on top. Not the most elaborate or delicious thing I'd ever made, but I was sure that if it came out like the Key Lime Pie did, it'd be fantastic. I put it in the fridge and left it there overnight.

The next day, (Wednesday), Curtis wants pie for breakfast. So I go to serve some of the pie...and was crushed to find that apparently when you leave out the lime juice and food coloring, the pie filling didn't harden, and it was just a big soupy thickened sweetened condensed milk mess! Why!? How?!

After a brief moment of wondering "Do we eat this?" I decided to give the pie a makeover. A second chance. I poured the filling back into my mixer, and took the crust with peanut butter/chocolate topping and threw it in my Vitamix. After turning it back into crumbs, I added it to the filling, along with more cream cheese and some eggs. I then made another crust with the rest of my cookie crumbs, and this time put it in the cheesecake pan. I added my new filling, baked it, then let it cool.

The result? It. Was. AMAZING!! I made a one-of-a-kind Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake that I will never be able to recreate. Curtis can't keep his hands out of it.

I guess if you want the recipe, here's the best I can do:

Second Chance Cheesecake
-3 cups of 2 month old peanut butter chocolate chip cookie crumbs, separated.
-½ cup butter, separated
-½ cup powdered sugar, separated
-2 8oz packages of cream cheese, separated
-1 can sweetened condensed milk
-2 eggs
-½ cup chocolate chips
-½ cup peanut butter chips

Melt ¼ cup butter, mix with 1 ½ cups cookie crumbs and ¼ cup powdered sugar. Press on bottom of pie tin. Melt the chocolate chips and PB chips and pour on top of the crust. Put in freezer for 15 minutes. Mix 1 package of cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk together, pour over crust. Refrigerate overnight. 
Next day: Mix remaining cream cheese with the eggs, then add in yesterday's pie filling. Put yesterday's crust in a blender or food processor, then add in to the ingredients in the mixer. Prepare another crust just like yesterday's, only in a cheesecake tin. Pour cheesecake filling on top, bake at 300 for 1 hour, let cool before refrigerating. Enjoy!

...Or, you could probably also go on Pinterest and search "Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake" and find something similar tasting, but infinitely easier. ;)