Being one of our most sought after flavors, peanut butter is being recognized this Saturday, January 25th, as National Peanut Butter Day. Loved by many across the world, this ingredient is widely used in many dessert recipes such as Peanut Butter Banana Swirl Muffins, Creamy Caramel Peanut Butter Dip, Peanut Butter Fudgy Brownies, and Mini Peanut Butter S’more Cups. Of course, one can always enjoy peanut butter by itself too: in a spoon, on an apple, or between one’s cracker (a spin-off from a Dr Seuss book). The most commonly made food item that includes peanut butter is of course the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich. Sandwiched between two slices of bread, this ingredient is well versatile with many other ingredients as noted above. While Phenomenal Fudge uses Jif Peanut Butter, surely a creamier blend would be hard to find.

When most think of peanut butter, they think of desserts and automatically think of the high fat content, or at least I do. However, proving many wrong, interesting to note is that “Peanut butter is a good source of vitamin E, B6, niacin, calcium, potassium and iron, is packed with protein and is rich in healthy monounsaturated fat” (NDC).

Originally used as a paste and primarily for animal feed back in the early days of the 1800’s, the following people are to be noted for creating the peanut butter which is sold across the country: Marcus Gilmore Edson of Canada, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Dr. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis, Missouri and chemist Joseph Rosefield.

Source: NDC (National Day Calendar)