Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Peanut Butter - no, not that kind

When I was a kid, I was very literal. That led to the great raisin problem, but it also affected my interpretation of what a "real" peanut butter sandwich was.

I can remember quite a few arguments with my mother because I thought that a peanut butter sandwich should have butter in it. I wanted her to butter the bread, then smear on the peanut butter. I told her that without butter, it was just a peanut sandwich.

Of course, now I know that the "butter" refers to the texture of the ground peanuts rather than any reference to dairy products.

But still ...

My reasoning was wrong, but it wasn't a terrible idea. The butter makes the peanut butter a little less dense and heavy and roof-of-mouth-sticky. The combination makes at least some sense.

A while back, I toyed with the idea of making a compound butter with peanuts and butter, but never got around to it. Every time I thought about it, my next thought was that it would be too greasy.

So I let the idea drop.

Until I found something new.

When I heard about a powdered peanut butter - essentially peanut butter with the oil removed - I thought that might be a lot of fun to play around with. Like a good food blogger, I contacted the company to see if they might want to send me some samples.

And hey, they did. Not only is there a peanut butter powder, but there's also a peanut butter and chocolate powder. That's going to be interesting to work with.

The very first thing I thought of was combining butter and the peanut powder to make a less dense peanutty spread. I started small, with 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of peanut powder. A cracker served as my tasting platform. It was interesting ... but a better use was on toast, where it melted.

Or it could be used for making biscuits.

Think about that! Biscuits with a peanutty butter flavor. Or croissants! Puff pastry!!!

Needless to say, I'm just starting to experiment with this product, but I've got ideas. I'm sure not all of them will work, but it's going to be fun trying! And I'll be posting the ones that work. I'm pretty excited about this stuff - it's not often I find something so new and so familiar at the same time.

Have you tried this product? What have you used it for? What do you think I should use it for?
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