Homemade peanut butter from peanut flour (sugar free option)

Homemade peanut butter from peanut flour

 

There are five of us in our family and I'm the only one who isn't a fan of peanut butter.  I like it in or on a few items, my favorite being a smear of peanut butter on a hot, crunchy English Muffin, but in general you won't find me eating a peanut butter sandwich nor snacking on a peanut butter cookie.   So I surprised myself by noticing the top 3 recipes I've wanted to make in the past 2 days all called for peanut butter!   Unfortunately, I hadn't bought peanut butter in the last 2 or 3 grocery trips so we were down to about 1/4 cup of natural peanut butter - which isn't enough to do much with.

That's when two things popped into mind; 

• I have a peanut butter powder in our emergency storage
• I have a pound of peanut butter flour in the pantry

Since the peanut flour was handy I pulled it out.  I originally bought it to bake and cook with when we are following a strict low carb way-of-eating, except I don't like the taste of peanuts in most of our food so I use it very sparingly.  I happened to purchase the Protein Plus brand peanut flour online a few months ago, so that is brand product I used for this 'test'.  I'll link to it below this post, but since I've never tried any other brands, I'm not sure how it compares.

I read the package, which had no instructions for making peanut butter.  No worries, it shouldn't be hard to 'play with my food'.  Originally I figured I'd just add some water but knowing 'real' peanut butter is peanuts, oil, salt and sugar, I re-thought that process.  I didn't want to use oil (no need to add extra fat and calories for no reason) so I opted for milk instead - thinking it would give it a 'creamy' texture.   We don't purchase regular cow's milk, we only use unsweetened, original almond milk so that is what you see in the photo.  I added a bit of sweetener (I chose Stevia in the raw simply because it was handy in little packet forms in the cupboard but could have used Xylitol, Splenda, Erythritol, Swerve, Just Like Sugar, or even real, regular sugar) as well as a little salt.  It was still missing 'something' and it dawned on me;  honey!  And I had sugar free honey in the pantry as well so I used that, but readers could use regular honey of course if they wish!

The end result was near enough to peanut butter that I was happy with it, but needed another opinion.  Just then my 17 year old daughter came into the kitchen.  I asked her to taste "this" with little explanation other than warning her it was sugar free, so it wouldn't be as sweet as sugar-laden comparisons.  She tasted it, looked at me with a 'am I missing something?' look on her face, and said....   "It's peanut butter."    Good!  That's what it is supposed to look, spread and taste like!

Here is what I did;

Homemade Peanut Butter from Peanut Flour

1/2 c peanut flour
1/4 c milk
1-2 t sugar or sugar substitute (taste test to your preference)
1/2 t salt (again, taste test and add more if you wish)
1 1/2 t honey (more or less to taste)

Mix well with a rubber scraper and use as you would peanut butter.   I stored ours in with the 1/4 cup of Natural Peanut Butter we had in the pantry so it is already in a jar labeled 'peanut butter' - which worked perfectly!