The Great Peanut Butter Emergency of late winter 2014 (see my original post here) got me started on making my own peanut butter. As promised, I continued experimenting with that original recipe; with the changes I’ve made, it now rivals my favorite store-bought brand in texture and spreadability (go to the revised recipe here). In terms of flavor, IMHO, it’s better! Fresh, warm peanut butter (think fresh-baked bread), with its heady aromas, delicious flavors, and exceptional mouth-feel, is so good! It’s a 3-D movie compared to its stick-figure flipbook of a store-bought cousin.
We’re eating more peanut butter than ever. Emboldened, the DD wants to branch out into almond butter and cashew butter. She tries peanut butter with almost anything. Some of her recent trials:
- green olives (yum)
- sliced bananas (grudging OK from the girl who only ever allows bananas to pass the security gates of her lips in the form of banana-nut-chocolate chip muffins)
- mashed potatoes (yuck)
- figs (OMG! That’s disgusting!)
She ought to have a blog.
The secret to great homemade peanut butter is in roasting the nuts, grinding them while they’re still piping hot, and then processing them until they’re whipped. In the spirit of complete transparency, the DD prefers the flavor of the PB without additional roasting. The image of the (empty) jar of “Better Butter” peanut butter at the top of the post is one that she made and labeled. In my rival marketing campaign, I’m calling my peanut butter “Bestest Butter.” She likes a mellower flavor so that she can really pile it on, but I like the full-bodied flavor and darker color that additional roasting brings out. Of course, the beauty of homemade is that if you like a mild-tasting PB, you can skip the additional roasting and simply grind the peanuts as described in the recipe. Which do you prefer? The lighter original or the robust revised version?