Archive for: peanut butter
This is a cookie that will appease both peanut butter lovers and chocolate chip fans: a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. You can certainly throw a handful of chocolate chips into just about any peanut butter cookie dough (or dip the cookies in chocolate!) to get this flavor combination, but peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies have different textures to them and this cookie delivers something encompasses elements of both types.
The cookies are big and tender, with a hint of crispiness on the edges and a slight chewiness to them that is more like a chocolate chip cookie than a straight peanut butter one. They don’t have an overly strong peanut butter flavor to them and I like to use crunchy peanut butter to get the addition of little pieces of peanut in the finished cookies. Smooth peanut butter will work just as well. I used a national brand (JIF, to be specific) but these cookies should work out well with natural peanut butter, too. If you are using unsalted peanut butter, you may want to increase the salt in the cookies by 1/4 teaspoon to highlight the peanut butter flavor a bit more.
These cookies keep very well and are a great change of pace from your average peanut butter cookie. I like dark chocolate chips in these, but milk chocolate chips also really compliment the peanut butter flavor of the cookies and will sweeten things up just a little bit. To really take a batch of these cookies over-the-top with peanut butter and chocolate, keep an eye out for mini peanut butter cups (Trader Joe’s carries them) and mix those in along with the chocolate chips.
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Peanut butter pie is, quite honestly, something that I didn’t think would appeal to me the first time I had it. I like peanut butter, but a pie with a super-creamy peanut butter base actually sounded like it would be a bit (or a lot) too much. When I was a pie judge at the American Pie Council’s Pie Contest last year, however, I had the chance to try several peanut butter pies and was very impressed with the flavor and texture of them. I still love apple pies, but a whole new pie category was opened to me after that.
There are all kinds of peanut butter pies out there, from creamy, mousse-like pies to dense, fudge-like pies. This pie is a bit candy-like and reminds me of a huge Reese’s peanut butter cup. As you can imagine, it’s a big hit with kids. It is a little bit of a twist on a recipe I saw Alton Brown make on an episode of Good Eats a couple of years ago. The pie is made with homemade peanut butter, sweetened and thickened with some confectioners’ sugar and smoothed with a bit of butter. That sounds too simple to work, but the deep flavor of the homemade peanut butter gives the pie a lot of body and a freshness that you definitely wouldn’t get from store-bought peanut butter. The filling is poured into a dark chocolate-lined crust and drizzled with plenty of extra chocolate. The dark chocolate keeps it from getting too sweet, while the crust adds a nice crunch and texture. A graham cracker crust will work (and you can see I’ve used one in the photo above), but a chocolate crumb crust is even better.
The pie filling will thicken up in the refrigerator and the pie should be served cold. It is dense and creamy, but still has a bit of texture from the peanuts in the homemade peanut butter. Slice it with a warm knife (run it under hot water and quickly dry it off before using) to get very clean slices. The pie is rich, so serve it in small slices. To lighten up the pie if it feels a bit too candy-like for your taste, serve it with a bit of very lightly sweetened whipped cream for a mousse-like feel.
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Peanut butter is a delicious and versatile ingredient that we can spread on sandwiches, mix into cookies and use as a base for all kinds of savory sauces. Most of the time, we buy our peanut butter and choose from one of dozens of varieties available at the supermarket. If you have a food processor, you can actually make your own peanut butter very easily at home and gain the ability to control what goes into your butter and control the texture.
You can make a huge batch of peanut butter, but I would actually recommend starting with this recipe of halving because it is easier to keep and use in the fridge. It is also easier to tweak the recipe in the future if you decide that you like a little more salt, a little more sugar or some other element. The process is simple: place roasted peanuts in the food processor and whiz with a bit of salt, a bit of sugar and a bit of oil until the mixture is smooth and creamy. You can vary the seasoning to your taste and the amount of oil to the consistency that you like best, but no matter what you’re going to end up with a very fresh tasting peanut butter.
Homemade peanut butters are almost never as smooth as store-bought peanut butters, which utilize much heavier duty equipment for crushing peanuts into a paste than a counter-top food processor. My peanut butters have a very slightly sandy texture by the time I’m done with them. I add back in chopped peanuts for “chunky” peanut butter.
Now, while I like homemade peanut butter for sandwiches and toast, I still prefer brands like JIF for baking because they give a more consistent – and sometimes better – result. You can certainly experiment with the homemade nut butter for baking, but keep in mind that most recipes are written for national brands (regular and “natural” with their creamy consistency). This means your result may be different with homemade butter, so don’t worry if you need to do a little tweaking to get the cookies with homemade peanut butter turn out like the cookies made with a national brand.
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What kind of peanut butter do you keep in your pantry? Where there were once just a few options for peanut butter, it seems like there are dozens of types and brands to choose from these days. You have the option of creamy and crunchy, as well as natural, honey roasted, Omega-3 enriched, sea salt and no salt – just to name a handful of the options out there. Peanut butter is great on a sandwich, but it is also used in many recipes where both flavor and consistency play a big role. The testers at Cook’s Illustrated set out to wade through all the options and conducted a taste test of 10 different creamy peanut butters (March/April 2011) to find out what the differences were from jar to jar and what brands tasted best.
The most basic peanut butter can be made by pulverizing peanuts into a paste and adding a little salt. Few brands use this technique, as the peanut butter has a sandy texture that isn’t as appealing as the ultra creamy competitors out there. The creamy peanut butters, both regular and “natural,” generally use either hydrogenated oil (not the same as partially hydrogenated oil) or palm oil (a high saturated fat oil that is usually found in the “natural” peanut butters). The test kitchen wanted a creamy peanut butter that tasted good out of the jar and performed well in recipes, so they tested with spoons, peanut butter cookies and satay sauce to pick the winners.
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These cookies are like a peanut butter cup, but inside out and in cookie form. I realize that this actually makes them quite different from the peanut butter cups that you can buy in the candy aisle at the local grocery store (and the homemade version!), but the flavors are similar and these cookies have a cute peanut butter cup shape to them.
These start out with peanut butter cookie dough. The dough is pressed into a mini muffin tin and then a chocolate truffle is placed inside. The chocolate truffles are very easy to make for this recipe and I recommend making them youself, rather than trying to use storebought truffles, because they are firm enough to hold up to the baking process and they’re the right size to fit into the cookies. You can use milk chocolate, dark chocolate or semisweet chocolate in these. The cookies aren’t too sweet on their own, so I would opt for milk or semisweet chocolate unless you’re really looking for a not-very-sweet cookie.
The cookies have a crisp exterior and a good peanut butter flavor, and the chocolate center is a surprise that you find when you bite into one. Peanut butter and chocolate is a great combination and even better when cookies and truffles are involved. These look like they’re difficult to make and, while they do take a little bit of time, they’re actually much easier to make than they look – so you can impress your friends with the look and taste of these little cookies.
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