The Theme Is … Peanut Butter!

 
Today, March 3rd, is National Peanut Butter Lovers’ Day. Does anyone know how they schedule these food holidays? Because I’d like to suggest a National All-You-Can-Eat Dessert Lovers’ Day, and I imagine there may be some specific protocol in place for such requests.

In any case, we support just about anything that focuses on food around here, so let’s join the fun and give all the peanut butter lovers out there something to celebrate! Bakerella gets us started with her Nutter Butter Balls in the top photo. She uses only three ingredients, and oh, what she can do with those three.

Bakerella’s recipe reminds us that peanut butter and chocolate make excellent partners, and boy, have we got some more great partnerships here. Starting from the top left and going clockwise, we see in the photo below the classic Peanut Butter Buckeyes from Angie Arthur, awesome cookies with a surprise creamy filling called Magic Peanut Butter Middles from Karly Campbell, guiltykitchen’s elegant sweet and salty Idle Hand Bars that have pecans, hazelnuts, and pink Himalayan salt (they’d make wonderful little gifts), and of course, we had to include cookincanuck’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and Chocolate Cheesecake Bars. The title pretty much says it all.

 
 
 
You know what else really goes with peanut butter? Bananas. And what happens if you keep the chocolate, add bananas, and then, for good measure, throw some coffee in the mix?

You get Banana Chocolate Chip Espresso Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting from The Noshery.

It might be enough to convert some banana-haters (*cough*Ree*cough*) out there.

Of course, peanut butter isn’t just for dessert. It gives wonderful body to savory dishes, too. Like the Spicy Chicken Peanut Noodles from gitskt below on the left, and Ree’s Spicy Peanut Pasta Salad to the right. And because March is apparently also National Sauce Month (the sauces must have good lobbyists on their side to get an entire month to themselves), and as you know, we’re all about maximizing potential here, take a look at the Gluten Free Tangy Peanut Sauce below from elanaspantry that covers both food holidays.

 
 
 
Peanut butter is so versatile, and there are so many other wonderful recipes I didn’t get to include here. If you have any favorite peanut butter recipes, we’d love to hear them! Do you have any strongly-entrenched preferences? Do you like chunky, creamy, plain, honey roasted … or are they all good to you as long as they end up in your tummy?

I’ll get us started, because my answer is simple. My two favorite ways to have peanut butter are either in a PB&J sandwich, or in a spoon.

And yes, you guessed it. We’ve got a recipe for that, too.

Homemade Peanut Butter from Ali @ gimmesomeoven