Peanut Butter Sweets

By Pamela Bennett

Whether you like creamy or crunchy, there’s no denying that peanut butter ranks close to the top as a pantry staple. And what better way to enjoy it than by using it to create and share sweet treats! From smoothies, cookies, pies, and cakes to candies, dips, sauces, and toppings, the 70 recipes in this book are chosen winners. No matter how you spread it, Peanut Butter Sweets is a must for the peanut-butter lover’s bookshelf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781423624493

Pamela Bennett

Pamela Bennett grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated from Crofts College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She owned and operated Black Sheep Baskets in Dallas, Texas, which featured her jams. She now lives in Provo, Utah.

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Introduction

Peanut butter was an essential in my mama’s kitchen cupboard. It was woven into the everyday fabric of our lives: creamy peanut butter tucked inside hot buttermilk biscuits or generously slathered on bread with homemade blackberry jam, and the unmistakable fragrance of peanut butter cookies, fresh from the oven, awaiting us as we came home from school. Even when our mother became a successful business owner, she literally tucked a small jar of peanut butter in her purse everyday—it was her snack of choice. Growing up with peanut butter as a staple, it was only natural that my fifth-grade research project was written on the history of peanuts!

Peanuts were first grown by the Incas in Peru around 950 BC. They gradually made their way from South America to Africa and then onward to Spain, before finding their way to the American colonies. My native North Carolina shows a history of peanuts being planted by the year 1818, although some farmers claim that peanuts were growing there during the Revolutionary War.

George Washington Carver, the great botanist and inventor, promoted planting peanut crops to help poor farmers when their cotton crops failed. He developed over 100 recipes using peanuts as well as developing dyes, paints, cosmetics, even nitroglycerin using the complex, versatile peanut. His scientific research illuminated what we know today—peanuts are packed with protein and vitamins E and B3; they’re higher in antioxidants than apples or carrots. However, the most important thing is—peanut butter just tastes delicious! It enhances whatever it accompanies. Scientists extol the health benefits of eating peanut butter, but the kitchen of my childhood elevated simple peanut butter treats to rock-star status.

The paradox seems to be that the more we eat peanut butter, the more we enjoy it. Its versatility allows us to never tire of it—perfect peanut butter bars, dreamy, creamy peanut butter pie, decadently rich penuche and fudge, gooey lip-smacking pound cake laced with thick peanut butter frosting..., so it’s little wonder that the average American consumer eats six pounds of peanut butter each year. By the time a teen graduates from high school, she or he has eaten over 1,500 peanut butter sandwiches!

But there’s so much more versatility and potential waiting inside each of these legumes. This book will guide you through simple steps, using basic ingredients, to produce amazing goodies. It is filled with mouth-watering recipes of delectable sweet treats featuring peanut butter as the star ingredient: cakes, pies, cookies, candies, toppings, beverages—amazing sweets that you can’t imagine how you lived without before now.

Smoothies & Shakes