When I grow up I want to be...

...Ree Drummond. The Pioneer Woman herself. She is pretty close to amazing. 


There are things we have in common, for sure. 


She loves food. I love food. 
She lets her dog take over her life. I let my dog take over my life. 
She is married to the Marlboro Man. I am married to the Camel Man. 


But I have a ways to go. 


She gets up at 5am. I get up at 9am. 
She has a lot of children and a ranch. I have one dog and an apartment. 
She has a published cookbook. I have a notebook where I scribble ideas of things to make. 


If you have not read her blog, do so immediately. 


The Pioneer Woman



And do you know what else she does? She takes all her own photos, even the action shots. 
So I am working on my action shots.


I will demonstrate said action shots with the following recipe. 


Creamy Peanut Butter Pie
this recipe came from another blogger and it has a very touching story if you want to take a minute to read it.

CRUST ingredients if you want to be fancy:

8 ounces chocolate cookies

4 tablespoons butter, melted

4 ounces finely chopped chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup chopped peanuts

Otherwise, you can BUY A CRUST. 

PIE ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces cream cheese

1 cup creamy-style peanut butter

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 – 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Here we go.

First, whip the heavy cream. I used a hand mixer because I am not very patient. I suppose you could be a purist and do this by hand. Be my guest.

Next, smile. You are making something delicious after all. Creamy peanut butter & cream cheese at room temperature. 

Here's a fun fact: sometimes it can be a "sticky situation" to get PB out of a measuring cup. In a 2 cup glass measuring cup and fill to the 1/2 c. line with cold water. Then plop your PB in by spoon full until your water level rises to the desired line.
Example: need 1 cup of PB, fill until the water reaches 1 1/2 c. line .
I don't know who deserves credit for this. I learned it from my mom way back. Your peanut butter will come out of the water no worse for the wear and you won't lose half your peanut butter to the measuring cup.

Mix PB & CC. Look! I'm doing it... self action shot!

Add your powdered sugar. It looked so soft and fluffy. I wanted to sit in a giant pile of it. I refrained.

Add lemon juice. 

Add vanilla. This is good non-imitation Vanilla from Mexico. It was my honeymoon souvenir. I am so lame.

Add can-o-milk. I was impressed with myself for this picture. I feel it really captures the pouring action.

Mix all these things together. There I go again with the action. I might be getting the hang of this. 

Now fold in your whip cream. I did not fold. I mixed because it was pretty and I paid for it later. This pie was a little soupy. But the next day when I made this exact same pie AGAIN I folded.  And it was not soupy. Just fold. You'll be glad you did.

Pour your pie filling into your crust and freeze or refrigerate it, but I thought it was better frozen. It doesn't get hard so you can slice it with a butter knife even straight from the freezer... and you avoid potential soupy-ness? soupiness? That looks wrong.
Also, this makes a very large pie. It's really enough for two pies, especially if you are using one of those small store-bought crusts.

I have eaten WAY too much of this pie. I won't be making it again for a while, but I will remember it when I need a no-bake dessert or a make-ahead dessert.