Chocolate Peanut Butter Ribbon Dessert

One last frozen dessert, before it gets to be pumpkin dessert season!  At least I think this is the last one....might be one more in the near future!

Anyway, back to the recipe at hand.  This is one of my favorite types of desserts: layers, no baking, cream cheese and a high impression factor!  I seem to struggle to make baked goods and actually have them turn out, so that makes this no bake dessert perfect!

And of course, anything that combines chocolate and peanut butter is a guaranteed crowd pleaser!

Another nice thing about this one is that it doesn't make a ton.  If you have a group around 8 in number it works perfectly.  If it is pretty hard and frozen and you wait to add the cookies on top, you could even cut the pieces smaller to serve more people.

Ok, to get started, get your cream cheese out so it can soften to room temperature.

While makes this I had one of my absent minded moments.  After the cookies get crushed and mixed with the melted butter, the recipe says to line a loaf pan.  So yeah, I didn't notice that part and put my crushed cookies directly into my pan!

This doesn't affect the taste, just potentially how easily it comes out of the pan for serving.  I'll explain what I did at the end.  Next step is to mix the cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla until well blended.  If your cream cheese was at room temperature you won't have any little bumps.  Whisk in 3 cups of the cool whip and then spoon 1/2 cup of that mixture into a smaller bowl.  Add your melted chocolate to the 1/2 cup amount.  Of what is left of the cream cheese mixture, spread half of that onto the cookie crumbs.  Top with the chocolate layer and then the balance of the cream cheese mixture.

Freeze that for 4 hours or until firm.  Can leave overnight.  If you lined your pan, then you should be able to easily remove the dessert from the pan so you can put it on a platter for serving.  Now I forgot to line the pan, but I think it worked out better for me in the long run.  Using a hot knife (I ran it under hot water) I loosened the dessert around the edge.  I then set it into a small amount of hot water.  I was then able to flip it over and get the dessert to fall out.  I quickly flipped it back on to my platter and voila!  Dessert was ready to go!  I think removing the aluminum foil from the creases might prove annoying!  Once it is out of the pan, top with renaming cool whip and some coarsely chopped cookies.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ribbon Dessert
As found on Taste of Home

Ingredients:

12-15 Nutter Butter cookies, divided
2 Tbls butter or margarine, melted
1 8oz package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 tub (12oz) cool whip, thawed & divided
2 oz semi sweet baking chocolate, melted

Directions:

1. Crush about 8-10 cookies and mix with butter.  Press onto the bottom of a foil-lined 9x5 loaf pan.
2. Mix cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla together until blended.  Whisk in 3 cups of cool whip.  Spoon 1/2 cup of that mixture into a small bowl and add the melted chocolate to it.  Spread half of the remaining cream cheese mixture onto the crust layer.  Top with the chocolate layer and remaining cream cheese mixture.
3. Freeze 4 hours or until firm.  Invert onto plate.  Remove the foil, then re-invert dessert onto platter so that the crumb layer is on the bottom.  (If you opted not to line the pan, us a hot knife and a shallow hot water bath to loosen dessert to get it out of the pan).  Top dessert with remaining cool whip and some coarsely chopped cookies.