Chocolate-Peanut Butter Mousse Tart

Last week I had a craving, and I couldn't shake it. I think Elizabeth is partially to blame. Elizabeth and her goober pie. The pie has a graham cracker crust and is filled with peanut butter mousse and topped with chocolate ganache.

Peanut butter mousse.

I could not get peanut butter mousse out of my head. So I googled "peanut butter mousse" and scanned and clicked on recipes until my craving and my energy level agreed on a recipe. Rose Levy Beranbaum's chocolate-peanut butter mousse tart was the clear winner.

It was after work, about 6 pm, and Jeff was just about to leave to take Gunner for a walk. We didn't have all the ingredients for the recipe, and usually when that happens, I'll accompany the boys on their walk and run into the Whole Foods on Prospect Street along the way. (This is the only Whole Foods I don't like, but I deal with it in emergency situations such as this one.) So I asked Jeff to wait a few minutes while I whipped up the dough for the peanut butter cookie crust. (Oh, and I don't care what the recipe says: Use Skippy!) It needed to refrigerate for 1 hour, and I couldn't waste any time.

I got the dough in the fridge, bundled up, and headed out with the boys. I grabbed the missing ingredients (heavy cream and cream cheese) as well as a few things to make pork fried rice for dinner at Whole Foods, and we headed back home.

The dough may not have been in the fridge for an entire hour at that point, but I decided I could still roll it out and followed the directions to roll it out between two sheets of plastic wrap and transfer it to the tart pan. It stuck a little to the plastic because it should have been chilled longer, but it still worked out. Back to the fridge it went for another hour, while I threw together the pork fried rice.

As we were finishing dinner, I preheated the oven and retrieved the tart from the fridge. I baked it off, let it start cooling, and made the chocolate ganache.

Here, I recommend not bothering with all the complications in the recipe. Measure out milk chocolate chips and bittersweet chocolate chips, and put them in a heatproof bowl. Bring the heavy cream to a boil on the stove and pour it over the chocolate chips. Whisk until smooth, and whisk in the vanilla. (If the ganache sets up too much before you have a chance to pour it over the peanut butter mousse, just microwave it for 30 seconds.)

With the ganache ready to go and the tart nearly cool, I set to work on the much-anticipated peanut butter mousse. It's simply a mixture of peanut butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla, lightened with lightly whipped cream. So easy. So ridiculously good.

I heaped the peanut butter mousse into the cooled cookie crust and spread it evenly and smoothed the top.

Then I poured the rich chocolate ganache over the mousse and used a baby offset to spread it evenly. You have to work very fast here because the ganache starts setting up pretty quickly. And then it's back to the fridge for another hour!

At about 10:30 pm, I served us some slices of the chocolate-peanut butter mousse tart. I know it was kind of crazy of me to make such a decadent dessert on a weeknight, but when I took that first bite, I knew exactly why I went through all that trouble: peanut butter mousse.

The next night, when we had a little more time, we took out one of my new kitchen toys. Actually I've had it for many months now but just haven't had a chance to use it yet. Back when Snappy Tuna was still cool and sold stuff at discounted prices -- rather than the bidding wars it holds now -- I got an iSi Gourmet Whip for $40. (It retails for $140.)

I simply took 1 cup of heavy cream, whisked in about 2 teaspoons of confectioners' sugar and a splash of vanilla, and poured it into the canister. Jeff did the fun part and attached the cream charger and shook the canister after the gas released.

Within seconds we had fresh whipped cream to go along the chocolate-peanut butter mousse tart!

Have you ever had such a strong craving that you had to stop whatever you were doing to satisfy it? What was it for?