Chocolate Peanut Caramel Pie

Absolutely impossible to resist this pie !!! Crunchy, melting and soft in one bite… I made a big version to bring to the office (22 cm) and a small version (8 cm) for the picture for the blog because I knew the caramel would melt after cutting it. 

For the dough, I used the, now top 1 on my list, recipe of Chistophe Felder from his book Patisserie! I use the sweet dough from the lemon pie recipe. He use a bit of almond powder and the seeds of vanilla. Great taste and the dough is not as hard as regular sand dough for pies like these. 

For the rest of the recipe, I followed the one on this blog

Ingredients :

Dough 

• 120 g of soft butter
• 80 g icing sugar
• 1 vanilla pod
• 25 g of almond powder
• a pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 200 g flour

Caramel/Peanuts layer

• 80 g of sugar
• 60 g of glucose (or honey if you can’t find glucose)
• 45 g of salty butter
• 90 g of liquid cream (the one you use to make whipped cream)
• 100 g of unsalted peanuts 

Chocolate ganache

• 100 g of dark or milk chocolate (the original recipe said milk, I used dark which worked fine)
• 10 g of honey
• 65 g of liquid cream 

Start with the dough. Sift the icing sugar on top of the soft butter in a large bowl. Add the almond powder. 

Cut the vanilla pod in half and remove as many seeds as possible with a knife. Add the seeds to the butter/sugar/almond mix with the pinch of salt. Mix with a wooden spatula.

Add the egg and keep mixing. 

Sift the flour on top of this preparation and mix it to obtain a smooth dough. Don’t mix it for too long. 

Make a ball with the dough and wrap it in plastic foil. Place it in the fridge for about 2 hours (you can prepare it the day before). This step is important to harden the dough, otherwise it will be too soft to work with. 

After 2 hours, take the dough out of the fridge and warm it up with your hands. Try to flatten it as much as possible.

Place the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper and flatten it with a roll until it is 4-5 mm thick. Then cut the dough with the baking ring of your choice or place it in a pie mould. I used a a 22 cm ring.

Pre-heat the oven at 180˚C. Bake the dough for 15 to 20 min until light brown colored. Let it cool down. 

Let’s prepare the caramel now. 

Put the sugar with the glucose or honey in a pan and make a dry caramel. When the caramel is ready (brown colour but be careful not to let it burn), remove the pan from the stove and add the cream. If needed, put the pan back on the stove until everything is smooth. Then add the butter and mix well until all the pieces are incorporated. 

Cut the peanuts in big pieces and add them to the caramel. Pour this mix on the dough and spread it evenly. Let it cool down again. 

Prepare the chocolate ganache. 

If you are not using chocolate chips like I do, cut the chocolate in small pieces and place them in a large bowl. 

In a small pan, warm up the cream and the honey. When it starts making small bubbles on the side, pour this mix on the chocolate. Let it melt for a minute and then stir it with a spatula until all the pieces of chocolate are melted. 

Then pour it on top of the caramel layer. Spread it evenly with a spatula. You can also “shake” very gently the whole pie to remove the spatula traces and get a nice even layer.

Put the pie in the fridge until serving.

Bon appétit !