What is the best brand of peanut butter to use for baking? (all natural)?!
What is the best brand of peanut butter to use for baking? (all natural)?
thanks! i would prefer it if the peanut butter was all-natural, but if all natural peanut butter isn't good in cooking please let me know. thanks!
Answers:
I was just making a peanut-butter-chocolate cake earlier today, so I was actually thinking about this.
Most baked dessert recipes call for some kind of fat in the recipe: butter, shortening, oil.
The NON-all-natural peanut butters usually contain shortening, to help make the peanut butter more spreadable and to keep it from separating like all-natural peanut butter does.
This means that recipes calling for peanut butter (unless they specifically call for all-natural) usually consider the peanut butter as equivalent to shortening or other fats. For example, the chocolate-peanut-butter frosting I made for the cake earlier today had NO butter or other fats in the recipe, except for what was already in the peanut butter.
All-natural or organic peanut butters will have SOME fat in them, from the peanut oil present in the peanuts. But it will be less than in the regular peanut butter from the store. So the recipe might have to be adjusted to add a slight bit of extra butter or oil to produce a proper texture and flavor.
You might try searching for recipes that specifically call for all-natural or organic peanut butter. (allrecipes.com has an "ingredient search" category on its search engine.)
Buy peanuts make your own.
laura scudders is good. also, you can go to your local co-op or health food store and grind your own peanuts if you like (assuming you have a shop like that).
Jif doesn't dry out the way others do.It's my preference when baking and when eating it straight out of the jar.LOL