Sure, you put butter and salt on your corn on the cob, but what about peanut butter?
Posts with tag Peanut butter
Tip of the Day: You can put more than butter on corn on the cob
Continue reading Tip of the Day: You can put more than butter on corn on the cob
The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition wraps up
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that E from Foodaphilia had teamed up with Nick the Peanut Butter Boy and Kristina from The Chocolate Peanut Butter Gallery to create the first ever Peanut Butter Exhibition. They asked their readers to put on their thinking caps and send in recipes and pictures of the best of their peanut butter baked goods. They had 16 entries and while all the recipes sound delicious, they managed to determine winners for the first, second and third places. However, there are no losers, as how can you lose when you have a pile of peanut butter confections at the end of the day?
The three top recipes are, HolyCrapTheseAreAmazing Cookies by Susan from Susan at Sticky Gooey Creamy Chewy, Peanut Butter Cookies Loaded for Bear from Ferdzy at Seasonal Ontario Food and Exotic Spiced Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies from Dee at Choos & Chews. A complete list of recipe names and links (brazenly stolen from Foodaphilia)is after the jump.
Continue reading The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition wraps up
The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition
Are you a peanut butter lover? Can't get enough of desserts infused with that nutty, creamy flavor? Well then, I have an event for you. E at Foodaphilia has teamed up with The Peanut Butter Boy and the Chocolate Peanut Butter Gallery to bring you The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition. Everyone is invited to submit their favorite peanut butter recipe. Entries will be judged based on Uniqueness, Peanut Butter Weight, Drool Factor and Preparation Time. The contest is open until April 28th at noon. One entry per person, please. All recipes must be originals, so start your ovens! For the rest of the entry rules and information, head over to Foodaphilia for the details.
When to trash your peanut butter
Some foods practically tell you when to throw them out - they stink, they are covered in mold, or they change colors. This is not the case with peanut butter.
Peanut butter seldom molds because despite feeling wet and greasy, it is actually extremely dry. Peanut butter separates, but that just means it's time to shake it up.
Your peanut butter can, however, become rancid after 9-12 months of sitting around. Among many other facts, Live Science tells us that rancid peanut butter actually won't hurt you if you eat it. It just tastes bad.
In short, if your peanut butter tastes bad, dump it. Otherwise, you can worry about your strange taste buds but you don't need to worry about getting sick.
We once had a jar of peanut butter for over 5 years. We didn't eat from it, but we coated our dog's medicine with it so that he would eat it. Scruffles didn't have any problem with the taste.
What's the longest you've had a jar of peanut butter?
Peanut butter taste test
I grew up with health food store peanut butter. The kind that is essentially just ground peanuts and a little salt, where the oil rises to the top and either has to be stirred in or poured off before you can make a sandwich. I was always envious of my friends who had jars of Skippy or Jif in their cabinets (our peanut butter had to be stored in the fridge so that it didn't go bad). These days I now prefer the peanut butter I grew up with, loving the flavor of the nuts and salt without any added sugar or fats. The folks over at AOL Food threw themselves on sword of bad food and tasted 35 different jars of peanut butter in order to find the very best of the best. Their winner was Whole Foods 365 Brand Crunchy Peanut Butter. I'm not a huge fan of crunchy peanut butter typically, but hearing that a collection of reliable foodies determined that it was the best of the bunch makes me curious to give it a shot.
Okay folks, what do you think? Did the AOL Food testers get it right? What's your favorite peanut butter?
Super Bowl Week: Buckeyes
In case you haven't figured it out by now, I am a football fan.
However, I have to admit that at least one third of my interest in football is not about the game. Sure, I can follow the game, thanks to four years on the high school cheerleading squad (please, spare me all the comments about cheerleaders -- I already hate myself enough about it). I most certainly appreciate the athletics of the sport, and love giving all my love and adoration to
Now I know that buckeyes have everything to do with Ohio and pretty much nothing to do with New England, New York, or even Phoenix, where the Super Bowl is taking place, but for me, they are a peanut buttery, chocolate-y representation of football. I didn't post about it much here at the beginning of January, but I went to New Orleans to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes and the LSU Tigers play in the Championship Game for college football. So for now, let's just say that tiny peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate are a great sweet snack to serve your guests during a football party.
Food Porn Daily: Peanut butter, banana and honey
I spotted the thumbnail of this picture (from Sunday Nite Dinner) and immediately knew I had found today's Food Porn Daily. I have always (ALWAYS) had a weakness for peanut butter and honey. When I was a kid, my mom would make it for me and she'd had to hid the honey under the peanut butter so that I wouldn't just lick it off. As I got older, it became my go-to breakfast of choice (I can't tell you how many morning classes I walked to during college with a piece of peanut butter and honey toast in hand). And when you add some sliced banana to the combination, you're talking about nirvana on a slice of bread (in this case, thick-sliced cinnamon swirl bread). If you want to see more pictures of this delectable combination, head over to Sunday Nite Dinner and check out the slideshow. And thanks, Chuck, for adding your picture to the group.
If you have a picture you'd like to see featured in this space, head on over to our Flickr group, join up and start adding your images.
Microwave Drop Cookies
No, this doesn't mean you drop your microwave and delicious cookies suddenly appear.
Mom's Best Recipes, one of my favorite food blogs, has this recipe for Microwave Drop Cookies, which sound great and are super-easy to make, taking only a couple of minutes to make. Seriously, you cook them for two minutes! these might be good if you're looking for a snack at night while you're watching TV or reading and don't want to make them in a regular oven. Full recipe after the jump.
Cookie-a-Day: Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies
When I got home for the holidays, my mom mentioned that she'd been craving some peanut butter cookies with bits of chocolate chips in them. I smiled and nodded and didn't think that much more about it. Then I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and realized that these might just be my mom's dream cookie. Being the kind of daughter I am, I decided to pull together a batch and so last night ran out to Safeway for some chunky peanut butter and chocolate chips.
I knew they were a winner when I tasted the batter and when they baked up they were even better. The one thing I have to stress about this recipe is that you must follow Deb's instructions and get them out of the oven before you think they are done. I cooked the first tray a little bit too long and ended up regretting it as it somehow cooked the essence of peanut out of them. But as long as you take them out before they really start to brown up, you will end up with some amazing cookies.
Continue reading Cookie-a-Day: Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies
Cookie-a-Day: Peanut Butter Cream Brownies
Let's not get all crazy technical here by telling us that a brownie isn't a cookie. We already got all kinds of heat about dictionary definitions, etc when we told the lucky recipients that they were receiving the results of our cookie-baking chaos. "Cookie baking?" they asked? "Cookie?" These are brownies!
Ungrateful little *censored*. We had it in our minds to snatch the batch back and run off with our "brownies."
If we have to get technical about it, let's just say that these Peanut Butter Cream Brownies are peanut butter cream and chocolate fudge "bar cookies" and be done with it. The bottom layer is a standard fudge brownie recipe that uses cocoa powder, but if you have your own favorite recipe, use it, keeping in mind that the brownies bake in a smaller pan. In other words, if your recipe goes into a 9x13 pan, make half of it.
The top layer is a peanut butter and cream cheese mixture, hence the name Peanut Butter Cream. We used crunchy peanut butter, not because we think tiny chopped hard things tainting peanut butter is okay, but because we used all the smooth peanut butter making regular peanut butter cookies.
Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting and Reese's
It's been a long day here at Slashfood, though with such a sugar high off all the candy we threw at you, it probably seemed to go by fairly quickly! To round out our day of candy in honor of Halloween, let's have a dessert made in the spirit of one of many people's favorite candy, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- chocolate and peanut butter in one.
To make this cupcake, I baked chocolate cupcakes. To be quite honest, whatever chocolate cake recipe that works for you, works for me because in the end, the most crucial part of the cupcake is the Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting. I've made peanut butter based frosting before, but I used a slightly different recipe this time
Combine ½ c. softened butter with 1 c. creamy peanut butter (if you like crunchy, use crunchy, which is what I've done before). Add 2 c. powdered sugar (sifted after measuring), and up to ¼ c. heavy cream until you get the consistency you want.
Frost your cupcakes, then top with all those leftover Reese's Peanut Butter Cups!
Plumpynut--the peanut concoction that is saving lives
So often here on Slashfood we focus on tasty things to eat that we often forget about the places in the world where the people don't have enough to eat. CNN's Anderson Cooper has been in Africa recently, doing special reports for 60 Minutes and on Sunday night presented a story about Plumpynut. It's a combination of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar and vitamins that is preventing children in famine-wracked countries from dying of malnutrition. It is cheap to make, doesn't need refrigeration and is so easy to eat that many kids can feed themselves. For all the peanut allergies in this country, doctors who hand out the Plumpynut say that they don't see much, if any incident of allergy in the countries where this product is being used. With all the reports of dangerous food and agribusiness in this country these days, it's nice to hear a story about how lives are being saved with the distribution of such a simple food.
Save the planet one sandwich at a time
According to the PB&J Campaign, changing the world is as easy as packing yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch each day. They say that eating a single peanut butter and jelly (although I'm actually quite partial to honey instead of jelly) instead of a lunch based on animal protein can save the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon emissions and 280 gallons of water. Makes you think twice the next time you find yourself reaching for a burger. Their website also offers alternatives to PB&J if you aren't partial to that combo (or you eat your lunch at a place that forbids peanut products). Remember that peanut butter is also delicious spread inside celery, on apple slices or atop a piece of toast in the morning. If you're looking for ways to mix up that nutty spread, try stirring in a little cinnamon.
Photo link
Back to School: What not to send
Today we've been focusing on what to send for school lunches, what to send it in, and even what to do when the kids finally leave. (Bob, you are brilliant!) However, in my experience, there are certain food items that I've found are better served at home than sent to school. Feel free to agree, disagree, or add your own to the list.
Food that needs to be heated
Whether I was planning to send leftovers from dinner or products like canned food or Easy Mac, I was thrilled for all of about two days when I found out my daughter's school had a microwave. What I didn't bother to find out was that the kids only had 35 seconds each to use it. Obviously, this isn't enough time to heat most items, let alone cook something. Though this may vary slightly from school to school, even if they do have a microwave available, I suggest to avoid sending anything that needs to be heated or your child will spend half their lunch hour waiting in line just so they can eat something that is only slightly warmed up.
Back to School: Battle of the Peanut Butters
Even with all the media surrounding peanut allergies in kids, peanut butter still remains tops when it comes to sandwiches. Newsday put the eternal question to the test with 11 kids and got the answer to "What is the best peanut butter?" They tested 16 brands of peanut butter including store brands like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, and also controlled for crunchy and creamy preferences by testing them separately.
So who won out? As much as parents would love to have kids prefer natural peanut butters, national brand Skippy took first place in both creamy and crunchy categories, followed closely by Peter Pan and then Jif. For the full results, and more information about peanut butter in general, check out the Newsday article.
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