Category: peanutbutter

Peanut Butter Oreo Cheesecake Recipe

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

If you’re looking for a peanut butter cheesecake recipe, I’ve found that this one works quite well:

Oreo® Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Ingredients

  • 1 pkg. (15 oz.) Oreo Double Delight Peanut Butter ’n Chocolate Creme Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, divided
  • 3 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted
  • 3 pkg. (8 oz. each) Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 container (16 oz.) Sour Cream
  • 1 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 3 eggs

Preparation

  1. Finely crush 16 of the cookies. Coarsely chop remaining 14 cookies; set aside.
  2. Mix finely crushed cookies and butter. Press firmly onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan; set aside.
  3. Beat cream cheese and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add sour cream and peanut butter; mix well. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition just until blended. Gently stir in chopped cookies. Pour over crust.
  4. Bake at 350°F for 50 to 60 minutes or until center is almost set. Run knife or metal spatula around side of pan to loosen cake; cool before removing side of pan. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. Store leftover cheesecake in refrigerator.

I wouldn’t recommend attempting a low-fat cheesecake, but the recipe can be otherwise made slightly more healthy with few modifications. You could switch from “regular” peanut butter to natural peanut butter, and that eliminates much of the trans fat (except for those intrinsic to the Oreos).

And, you can swap out Splenda for the sugar — with this modification, each 1/12 slice has only 28g carbs, which isn’t bad considering that it’s cake. I’ve tried both approaches (substituting both the peanut butter and the sugar), and the cake still turned out well.

Update 2/5: If you’re going to try making a cheesecake, you may also find these cheesecake tips helpful. Among them, they recommend serving the cheesecake at room temperature, which would take about 30 mins out of the fridge (I didn’t know about that one).

Natural Peanut Butter

Ashley Bischoff101 Comments

I bought some Natural Peanut Butter the other day at Target. I needed some more peanut butter anyway, and I didn’t want the trans fat associated with regular peanut butter.

I hadn’t had natural peanut butter in years, probably not within the past ten years or so. As a kid, I didn’t like it much, as I preferred the sweetness of regular peanut butter. Trying it again now, it was quite tasty. It tasted as if it was created through crushing peanuts and putting the peanut-carnage right in a jar.

The only downfall, it seems, is that it was quite sticky — on a slice of bread it would seem to gum-up my mouth more so that regular peanut butter would tend to. I’m curious as to what factor is contributing to the stickiness.

I know it’s not for a lack of fat, as the Natural Peanut Butter has 16g (but of the “good fat”). And, I don’t think that the lower sugar-content would be a factor, as I wouldn’t think that sugar would contribute to stickiness one way or another.

Any ideas on techniques as to what could reduce the stickiness of natural peanut butter? I was thinking of adding (no-calorie) Splenda to my next peanut butter sandwich, so as to more closely resemble the sweetness that I’m used to, but is there anything that I could add that might unstickify the sandwich?

Peeps + Peanut Butter

Ashley Bischoff8 Comments

I was feeling a little peckish after breakfast this morning, so I was looking around the kitchen for a little snack. There’s not much around these days, as I’ve stopped buying cookies and Newtons for the time being.

I still hand plenty of Peeps — resulting from a 90%-off sale at Target after Easter — so I turned my attention to those. I was about to eat one raw, but then I recalled that I may as well nuke ’em. From there, my mind went into overdrive — “What if I could add a topping to nuked Peep to magnify its goodness?”. And, from there, I turned to peanut butter.

I just opened up the jar — reduced-fat, no less — and dunked the helpless Peep in there. I made sure that his little body was covered in peanuttyness. From there, I just placed him on a saucer and nuked him for 12 seconds on high.

Man, you thought nuked Peeps were good? This was spectacular. It was like taking the Peepiness to a whole new level. It was just fabulously delicous. Mmm, I’m going to have to exercise restraint to stop myself from eating too many of these ;).

European Elvis

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I was talking with my brother the other day about peanut butter and banana sandwiches. And, after reading about them, he had the urge to have one again.

Specifically, my brother had a craving for what’s apparently known as a “Velvet Elvis”, which is a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, except that it’s grilled as if like a grilled-cheese sandwich (with each slice buttered on the outside).

So, he set out to buy the necessary ingredients. And, normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, except that he’s interning in Germany for the summer. So, while the bread and bananas were easy enough to find, he just couldn’t find any peanut-butter at his local grocery store.

However, like any good European food-store, his local store had plenty of Nutella. Now, in case you’ve been living under a rock, Nutella is a chocolate-flavored spread made with hazelnuts. It’s very much delicious, but can hard to find in this country (at least at reasonable prices). So, at any rate, he picked up some Nutella as a substitute for the peanut butter.

He assembled and grilled the sandwich: bread + bananas + Nutella. He tells me that, though it was definitely tasty, it still didn’t live up to the full potential of a genuine Velvet Elvis. Nonetheless, he named this new sandwich as a “European Elvis” (a good name, I think). And, though I'm still a big fan of ordinary peanut butter and banana sandwiches, I look forward to consuming a European Elvis sometime.

ObJulie: Yes, I'm aware that Central Market probably has Nutella for sale ;).