What's New: Planter's Peanut Butter

I can never remember NOT eating peanut butter. Peanut butter and jelly toast for breakfast. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Peanut butter on Saltines for snack. My mother allowed us to put peanut butter on whatever bread we had at dinner, but we were not allowed to actually put the jar on the dining room table. That would have been tacky. My brother Michael kept it on the floor by his chair, in easy reach for sharing. Even when I was forced to eat cafeteria food in college, I kept peanut butter, grape jelly, and Club Crackers in my cupboard as my favorite snack while studying. When I used to travel for the company I work for, I often kept a jar of peanut butter and a spoon on the passenger seat next to me, company for the long stretches of road where there was nowhere to stop, and nothing to eat. I eat peanut butter almost every day, at least once.

Mr. Peanut has been a member of my household for as long as I can remember. My parents always had a big can of Planters Mixed Salted Nuts on hand for cocktails parties--it was my job to refill the nut dish when it got low. Personally, I have always preferred Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts to any other nuts out there, although lately I have come to prefer the lightly salted version. And my husband always has to have Planters Cashews in the house as his go-to snack.

So I was happy to hear that at long last, Planters is making its own peanut butter! I had often wished Planters made peanut butter. Whirring up Planter Dry Roasted Peanuts in the blender provided an unsatisfactory option. As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemakers Program, I received two jars of Planter's Peanut butter to try.

Although I refer to my son by the moniker of Bacon Boy, it would be much more accurate to call him Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich Boy. He turned twenty this summer, and for at least eighteen of those years, peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread sandwiches have been a mainstay of his diet. Though grade school and junior high, every day for lunch (unless it was pizza day in the cafeteria), he took a pb&j sandwich, Pringles, and apple slices for lunch. EVERY day. The lunch room ladies probably thought I was the most boring mother, making her son the exact same lunch every day, but it was what he wanted. Now when people see Bacon Boy, over six feet tall and over 200 pounds of pure muscle, they say to me, "How did he get so big?" And I always answer, "Peanut butter!"

So when the jars of Planter's Peanut Butter arrived from the National Peanut Board, the first taste test went to my son who happened to be home visiting from college. I have to explain. For eighteen years the only peanut butter he has eaten has been Skippy. Yes, I know all about the wonders of natural, organic, free-range peanut butter, but when you are buying it in gallon drums because your growing boy eats up to five or six sandwiches a day of the stuff (during high school it was not only lunch but pre-dinner snack), natural peanut butter is just too expensive. And the one time I tried to feed my son generic peanut butter, he acted like I had tried to give him a pb&j made from grape jelly and sawdust--he knew it wasn't Skippy. I had to feed the rest of that generic jar it to the birds.

So he happily let me make him a post-lunch snack of half a sandwich made with his friend Skippy, and half a sandwich made with the new Planter's Peanut Butter. He devoured the Skippy half, and then thoughtfully ate his way through the Planter's half. "It's different," he said, "but I like it." High praise!

Since I am the only one in the house who eats peanut butter straight off a spoon, I sampled the creamy Skippy and the creamy Planter's that way. I liked the Planters better. It had more of a roasted peanut flavor. Also in comparison, the Planter's had one less gram fat, one more gram protein, and the same amount of sodium and sugar as Skippy. The Planter's also packed more of powerful peanut aroma when I opened the jar--even after the jar had been open and in use for a week.

For my final test of flavor, I made peanut butter cookies using a recipe out of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook--the same recipe I have been using for decades:

• 1 stick of butter
• 1/2 cup of peanut butter
• 1/2 cup of granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup of dark brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup flour

First, cream the butter and the peanut butter together. Then beat in both the sugars, until smooth, and add the egg and vanilla. Mix together the salt, baking soda, and the flour, and stir it into the first mixture until thoroughly combined. Scoop the dough out in balls (I use my smallest cookie scoop that holds a teaspoon), and roll the balls in sugar. Flatten the balls on a cookie sheet with the bottom of a glass, and bake 10-12 minutes in a 350 degree oven. To decorate this batch, I pressed a piece of candy corn into the top of each cookie as soon as they came out of the oven.

My husband and I though the cookies were great--very peanuty--and even my daughter, Picky Girl, ate one and wanted more. Planter's Peanut Butter has become our new family peanut butter! 

Comments

[Another Peanut Butter Guy]

You wouldn't think there should be that big a difference in the taste of peanut butter, but I agree, there is. Will definitely have to give the Planters a try....

[Annie]

I was especially surpised in the difference between the way the two peanuts butters smelled. The Planter's had a great peanut aroma, whereas the other one just smelled oily.