Peanut Butter Archives

Cooking With TechyDad: Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Milkshakes

October 18, 2012 TechyDad Cooking, Peanut Butter, Photos, Recipe

Last year, I wrote about how I turned frozen bananas and dark chocolate peanut butter into a wonder ice cream. I’ve made it quite a few times since then. Anytime our bananas were looking too ripe, I’d peel them, break them into chunks, and toss them into the freezer. Recently, I realized I had a problem. We had too many bags of bananas in the freezer and not enough space to store a batch of ice cream. What to do?

I thought over the problem and wondered if I could make it into a smoothie instead. Only when I was done, I didn’t have a smoothie. I had a milkshake. What a wonderful surprise!

First, gather your ingredients. You’ll need frozen bananas, milk, and dark chocolate peanut butter. (I prefer Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolate Dreams Peanut Butter.)

Get your blender and toss in your bananas, milk, and dark chocolate peanut butter.

I put in one heaping spoonful of peanut butter for every 2 bananas, but didn’t measure the milk out. Use your judgment.

When the ingredients are in, close the lid and puree them until smooth.

Now just pour into a glass…

… and drink …

… until it is all gone.

This is so quick and easy that I think the kids will be begging for it often. I might mix this up and use regular peanut butter and add some strawberries (also sitting in the freezer) for a non-chocolaty version.

Cooking With TechyDad: Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Ice Cream

October 27, 2011 TechyDad Cooking, Food, Peanut Butter, Photos

It’s inevitable. You buy a bunch of bananas and though you use many, one or two start to turn brown. Not just normal brown, though. Those are still good to eat, but threatening-to-go-mushy-any-day brown. Time to toss out the bananas and buy a new bunch, right? Wrong. Well, maybe buy a new bunch, but don’t toss those old ones. Any baker will tell you that many a great banana-based recipe can use ripe bananas. Banana bread. Banana pancakes. Banana pudding. Banana muffins. Ice cream.

Yes, you read that last one right. Using only bananas and one other ingredient, you can make ice cream! That other ingredient isn’t even milk.

First, let’s start with the bananas.

Peel and slice the bananas. Stick them into ziploc bags and put them into the freezer. I usually put about 1 to 2 bananas per bag. Allow them to freeze for awhile. This might take a couple of hours, but you could also just put bananas in as you have them until you’ve collected enough.

Once you have quite a few bananas, you can make the ice cream. Take out your bananas and a jar of Peanut Butter & Co’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter.

First, put the bananas in your blender.

I usually work in batches of 2 bananas. I made a 4 banana batch once and it overwhelmed my poor blender. With the bananas in, turn the blender on. After awhile, the bananas will turn crumbly. You might have to stop a few times to move bananas off the blender’s sides and towards the middle.

Finally, the whole thing will take on a creamy, almost soft-serve texture.

At this point, toss in the dark chocolate peanut butter. One tablespoon per banana.

Turn the blender back on and puree the mixture together.

You now have soft serve dark chocolate peanut butter banana ice cream! If you want your ice cream more like hard ice cream, just put it in a container in the freezer for about 3 hours.

There you go. Hard dark chocolate peanut butter ice cream!

Given that this is only bananas and peanut butter, it’s probably healthy, right? Well, I came up with this little nutritional chart to the right. As you can see,

1 banana’s worth of the ice cream is under 200 calories, has only 7 grams of fat, and has 4 grams of fiber. Plus, it has 35% of your daily requirement of B6 and 20% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C. Let’s see plain ice cream do this!

Of course, it could be the healthiest ice cream in the world, but it wouldn’t matter if it tasted horrible. Luckily, it tastes great. I gave it to my boys and they loved it. I toyed with hiding the secret, non-dairy aspect of the ice cream from them, but decided to let them in on the secret. They still begged for bowls of it every night. They even tried asking for it for breakfast.

“After all”, NHL reasoned, "it’s peanut butter and bananas. It’s healthy!”

I’ve got to admit that I seriously entertained the notion of breakfast ice cream. Sadly, for the kids, I eventually turned them down. Still, I don’t mind giving them a bowl or two for dessert and they don’t mind gobbling it up.

My Most Controversial Post Ever: Nutella vs Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter

July 12, 2011 TechyDad Food, Peanut Butter

For quite awhile, I held off trying Nutella. I loved chocolate but wasn’t sure if I would like a chocolate hazelnut spread. Eventually, I gave in and bought a jar. I was instantly in love as were my boys. Around the same time, I also found Peanut Butter & Co’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. I guess, it was inevitable that I would decide to put them up to head-to-head competition. After much thought (meaning a quick brainstorm), I decided to award points on Price, Taste and Nutrition.

Price:

First, we need to buy the spreads, of course. Taste and Nutrition won’t matter if the product is so expensive that you shy away from buying it. I purchased a jar of Nutella for about $7.60 and a jar of Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter for $3. Win for Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter, right? Well, not so fast. The Nutella was 26.5oz while the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter was only 16oz. This might seem like a per-ounce victory for Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter except for the fact that I purchased it in the Christmas Tree Shops where it seems to be heavily discounted. Other places, it seems to retail for at least dollar more. Meanwhile, the Nutella was purchased in a store I happened to be in, not the one with the best price. This narrows down the price difference to be negligible. Verdict: Draw.

Taste:

I put some Nutella and Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter on some bread and gave it to the boys to try. In the past, they’ve tried (and loved) both spreads. This time they waffled back and forth between liking one or the other. Finally, they settled on the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. Later, I decided to try it myself. For me, the taste tied. Then, I made my patented (not really) Quick S’mores. I spread Nutella onto one graham cracker, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter onto another one, and marshmallow fluff on two more. Smooshing them together (a technical term), I had two S’mores, ready to eat.

So how’d they taste? Great. Both of them. I had trouble deciding which one I liked more. I guess it all boils down to whether you prefer the creamier consistency and milk chocolate flavor of Nutella or the peanut-buttery consistency and dark chocolate flavor of the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. Another draw.

Nutrition:

So far, this contest was turning out to be quite boring. So I turned the jars around and compared nutrition labels.

Nutella comes out ahead in fat, sodium and calcium. However, as far as calories, saturated fat, carbs, fiber, sugar and protein are concerned, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter wins. Once you examine the ingredients, the reason for this becomes apparent:

Nutella: SUGAR, PALM OIL, HAZELNUTS, COCOA, SKIM MILK, REDUCED MINERALS WHEY (MILK), LECITHIN AS EMULSIFIER (SOY), VANILLIN: AN ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR.

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter: PEANUTS, EVAPORATED CANE JUICE, COCOA, COCOA BUTTER, PALM FRUIT OIL, VANILLA, LECITHIN (FROM SUNFLOWERS), SALT.

The first ingredient in Nutella is sugar while the first in Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter is peanuts. This leads to increased carbs and sugar in the Nutella and slightly increased fat in the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter wins this round.

Final Verdict:

I’m not going to lie. Nutella will still have a place in our cabinet. However, when my boys are being picky and I want them to eat something healthy, I’ll definitely offer them a Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter sandwich.

Disclaimer: This post was not sponsored by anyone. I wasn’t paid or encouraged to write this. This was my own idea, I used my own money to purchase the products above and the opinions above are my own.

Cooking With TechyDad: The PB Files, Part 6: Maple Peanut Butter Mousse

July 20, 2010 TechyDad Cooking, Food, Peanut Butter, Photos

I’m a big fan of mousse, but I don’t often get the chance to make it. When I saw this recipe, I knew I’d have to make it. First, we gather our ingredients, all three of them.

That’s heavy cream, milk and Mighty Maple Peanut Butter. If you don’t have maple peanut butter, you could always add some maple syrup to the mix. First, put the milk and maple syrup peanut butter into a blender and blend them together.

Next, pour the egg whites into a bowl and beat them with an electric mixer until they form stiff peaks.

Now, fold in peanut butter-milk mixture.

Refrigerate the mixture for a few hours (or overnight), scoop into a bowl and enjoy.

The Verdict:

NHL and B didn’t like this one. I think they might be used to chocolate mousses and so were thrown by the maple flavor. I definitely think that the taste was improved by adding some mini-chocolate chips. Perhaps next time I’ll try making this with the Dark Chocolate Dreams Peanut Butter.

Disclaimer: Peanut Butter & Co sent me the jars of peanut butter to try. The opinions about the peanut butter and the dishes I make with them are my own, though, and have in no way been influenced by Peanut Butter & Co.

Cooking With TechyDad: The PB Files, Part 5: Wonderful White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

July 13, 2010 TechyDad Cooking, Food, Peanut Butter, Photos

I’ll admit right off the bat that I’m not a big white chocolate fan. I’m more of a dark chocolate person, myself. Still, how can you resist a peanut butter called White Chocolate Wonderful?

I found a recipe online for Flourless White Chocolate Peanut Butter cookies and then went to work gathering my ingredients.

That’s brown sugar, white chocolate peanut butter, baking soda, vanilla, white chocolate peanut butter chips and egg whites. First, we combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, baking soda and vanilla.

Now, in a second bowl, lightly beat the egg whites. (Bad, egg whites!)

Pour the beaten egg whites into the first bowl and mix it all together.

Fold in the white chocolate chips.

Now, scoop onto a baking sheet and cook at 350 for 10 to 12 minutes.

When they come out, do NOT try to move them. The cookies will be way too soft. Instead, let them cool for about 5 minutes on the baking sheet before moving them to a cooling rack. Or do like I did and let them cool for 5 minutes on the tray and then remove the aluminum foil – cookies and all – to let them cool for another 5 minutes. You’ll be rewarded with delicious white chocolate peanut butter cookies.

The verdict? Well, these were good, but to be honest, I have another peanut butter cookie recipe that I like more. I guess I like that one more due to the greater peanut butter taste. Still, this white chocolate peanut butter’s good stuff!

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