Frozen Peanut Butter Pie

Ingredients

• 1 pre-baked 9-inch graham cracker crust
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream, whipped

Method

1. Beat the cream cheese, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla together until smooth.
2. Fold in the whipped cream.
3. Pour the filling into the crust and smooth the top.
4. Refrigerate at least 4 hours, or until fully set, before slicing.

The Tale of Frozen Peanut Butter Pie

Story updated September 18, 2026

Frozen peanut butter pie has no clear inventor or founding date; like many no-bake American icebox desserts, it seems to have simply emerged from home kitchens over the course of the mid-twentieth century, as peanut butter itself became an everyday pantry staple after decades of marketing by companies eager to move past its origins as a health food. Family recipes traced by home cooks often point to the 1950s and 1960s, when cream cheese, peanut butter, and whipped topping-based fillings poured into graham cracker crusts were popular for their simplicity: no oven, no complicated technique, just mixing and freezing. The dessert fits a broader postwar pattern in American baking, in which convenience products like Cool Whip, packaged graham crumbs, and stabilized cream cheese made elaborate-tasting desserts achievable for any home cook. Its exact origin is genuinely murky, but its enduring popularity is not in doubt: peanut butter pie remains a fixture of Southern and Midwestern potlucks, diners, and family recipe boxes to this day.